Adventures in Paradox: Don Quixote and the western tradition [Hardcover ed.] 0271020393, 9780271020396

Citation preview

,!7IA2H1-acdgej!

6.14 x 9.21

.555

6.14 x 9.21

MARGARET

~dventures in ~aradox

PENN STATE STUDIES in ROMANCE LITERATURES Editors

Frederick A. de Armas

Refiguring the Hero: From Peasant to Noble in Lope de Vega and Calderon

Norris Lacy Allan Stoekl Medieval Spanish Epic: Mythic Roots and Ritual Language

by Thomas Montgomery

by Dian Fox Don Juan and the Point of Honor: Seduction, Patriarchal Society, and Literary Tradition

by James Mandrell Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction by Women

by Lou Chamon-Deutsch

Unfinished Revolutions: Legacies of Upheaval in Modern French Culture edited by Robert T. Denomme and

Roland H Simon Stages of Desire: The Mythological Tradition in Classical and Contemporary Spanish Theater

by Michael Kidd Garcilaso de la Vega and the Italian Renaissance by Daniel L. Heiple Allegories of Kingship: Calderon and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition

by Stephen Rupp Acts of Fiction: Resistance and Resolution from Sade to Baudelaire

by Scott Carpenter Grotesque Purgatory: A Study of Cervantes's Don Quixote, Part II

Fictions of the Feminine in the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Press

by Lou Chamon-Deutsch The Novels and Plays of Eduardo Manet: An Adventure in Multiculturalism

by Phyllis Zatlin Fernando de Rojas and the Renaissance Vision: Phantasm, Melancholy, and Didacticism in Celestina

by Ricardo Castells

by Henry W Sullivan Spanish Comedies and Historical Contexts in the 1620s

The Poetics of Empire in the Indies: Prophecy and Imitation in La Araucana and Os Luciadas

by William R. Blue

by James Nicolopulos

The Cultural Politics of Tel Quel: Literature and the Left in the Wake of Engagement

Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men

by Danielle Marx-Scouras

Margaret Greer

Madrid 1900: The Capital as Cradle of Literature and Culture

Vision, the Gaze, and the Function of the Senses in Celestina

by Michael Ugarte Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age

by Anthony J Cascardi

James F. Burke Adventures in Paradox:

Don Quixote and the Western Tradition Charles D. Presberg

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Education and Culture and United States Universities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Presberg, Charles D. Adventures in paradox: Don Quixote and the western tradition / Charles D. Presberg. p. cm.-(Penn State studies in Romance literatures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-02039-3 (alk. paper) 1. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616. Don Quixote. 2. Paradox in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PQ6353 .P72 2001 863'.3-dc21 99-055297 Copyright © 2001 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfY the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

For

Michael Stephen, and Philip

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction: Paradoxical Problems

IX

1

PART I Western Paradox and the Spanish Golden Age 1 2

Paradoxical Discourse from Antiquity to the Renaissance: Plato, Nicolaus Cusanus, and Erasmus Paradoxy and the Spanish Renaissance: Fernando de Rojas, Antonio de Guevara, and Pero Mexia

11

37

PART II Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self 3 4 5

"This Is Not a Prologue": Paradoxy and the Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I Paradoxes ofImitation: The Quest for Origins and Originality "I Know Who I Am": Don Quixote de la Mancha, Don Diego de Miranda, and the Paradox of Self-Knowledge

193

Concluding Remarks Works Cited Index

231 237 247

75 163

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Mary Gaylord and James Iffland guided me in turning an earlier version of this project into a doctoral dissertation presented at Harvard University, heroically enduring drafts that resembled what Henry James would call "a loose and baggy monster." I am deeply grateful to both of them, not only for helping me tighten my argument and diction but also for their compelling blend of humanity and professionalism, which I have retained as a model for imitation in my own professional endeavors. I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my friend and colleague Henry Sullivan, who read the entire manuscript, commenting insightfully on almost every page. With thankful enthusiasm, I have incorporated all his suggestions into my text. I thank my colleagues Lucille Kerr, Maria Cristina Quintero, and Ramon Araluce for commenting on various chapters of the manuscript. I thank Carroll Johnson, Michael McGaha, Harry Sieber, and Luis Murillo for questions, conversations, and correspondence that have helped refine important parts of my critical argument. I express my thanks to Raul Galoppe for his diligent assistance in proofreading, research, and editing; to Melinda Howard for her excellent research and proofreading, as well as for preparing a first draft of the index. At Penn State University Press, I wish to thank Frederick de Armas, series editor, for his unflagging support; Romaine Perrin, for her expert copyediting; Peter Potter, Shannon Pennefeather, Cherene Holland, and Patty Mitchell, for their skill and patience in bringing this book to completion. A section of Chapter 3 appeared in MLN (formerly Modern Language Notes) 110 (1995): 215-39; and an earlier version of Chapter 5 appeared in Cervantes 14 (1994): 41---69. I am thankful to the editors of both journals for permission to reproduce that material here. My thanks go, as well, to The Research Board at the University of Missouri for a summer research grant that permitted me to finish

x

Acknowledgments

this project in a timely fashion; and to the Program for Cultural Cooperation for a generous grant. I thank my ex-wife Elizabeth for her support at crucial stages of this book's preparation. And last, I thank my three children, Michael, Stephen, and Philip, for allowing me to rank happily among those persons who, in blessings and love, owe more than they can repay.

Introduction Paradoxical Problems

More than twenty years ago, Francisco Marquez Villanueva wrote: "The study of Don Quixote as a masterwork in the genre of paradox has yet to be carried out and remains one of the sizeable gaps in Cervantes scholarship" (El estudio del Quijote en cuanto obra maestra del genero parad6jico no se ha realizado aun y constituye uno de los grandes huecos en la bibliografia cervantina) (Marquez Villanueva 1975, 214).1 Since then, scholars have generally recognized the pervasiveness of paradox in Don Quixote, although no one has yet undertaken a systematic investigation of this trope in Cervantes' masterpiece. 2 My purpose in this study is to situate Cervantes' Don Quixote within the tradition of paradoxical discourse, or paradoxy, in the West. Hence, this book is a response, in part, to 1. Translations from Spanish to English are mine unless otherwise stated. 2. The subject of Cervantes' use of paradox is explicit in Russell 1969 and latent in an important study of semantic ambiguity and authorial ambivalence in Don Quixote by Duran (1960), both of which

2

Introduction

the challenge set forth by Marquez Villanueva, though I recognize that the specific gap to which he refers will remain unfilled and, perhaps, unfillable. In the first place, though I believe that Marquez Villanueva is right in pointing to Don Quixote as a work of literary paradoxy, my examination of that trope leads me to doubt whether one can properly speak of "paradox" as a "genre" (genero parad6jico) and, hence, to doubt whether Cervantes' fiction exemplifies such a genre. 3 The tradition of paradoxical writing encompasses works in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, rhetoric, and literature. And, among the literary works alone, a rhetoric of paradoxy informs a host of poems, dramas, prose narratives, anatomies, and miscellanies, all varying considerably in the selection-as well as the comic or serious treatment-of their subject matter. Paradoxy, in short, represents a particular if broad species of artful discourse. It is a trope of thought, a structuring principle, or a rhetorical strategy that moves freely and playfully across the boundaries that convention assigns to genres, modes, and intellectual disciplines. In the second place, I am aware that my attempt to undertake a systematic investigation of a slippery trope in a slippery text must begin with what Rosalie Colie calls a "defense of the indefensible"; that is, a defense of this "attempt to treat systematically a subject [both the trope and the text] designed to deny and destroy systems" (Colie 1966, vii). Paradoxically enough, the defense and indefensibility coincide in that paradoxy both "denies" and "destroys" systems through a rhetorical gesture of self-reference. In other words, paradoxical discourse systematically uses the categories of language and logic to question and mock the very categories that undergird language and logic as discursive systems. As a consequence, paradoxist and public alike must reassess their formerly untested assumptions about logic and language, even as they realize that the measure of a writer or rhetor's success in using the system against itself is also a measure of his or her failure to undermine that system. In equal measure, what Colie would call destruction thus becomes a form of validation, denial a form of affirmation. In the present analysis of Cervantine paradoxy, it is therefore necessary to acknowledge, at once, the utility and futility of systematic treatment. The categorical limits set forth in these pages stand as only one possible means of arranging a

studies predate Marquez Villanueva's observation quoted above. Besides the study by Marquez Villanueva from which that quotation is taken (1975, 147-27), other discussions of paradox in Don Quixote include those by Eisenberg (1987, 188-93), Jones (1986), Martin (1991, 79-80) and Parr (1988, 103-19). Two studies by Forcione (1982, 1984) explore aspects of Cervantes' paradoxical discourse chiefly in relation to that author's Exempldry Novellds (Novelds ejempldres). 3. It seems that the "genre" that Marquez has in mind is the "paradoxical encomium," also called the "mock encomium," a burlesque species of declamation that I discuss in Chapter 1 of the presenr study.

Introduction

3

subject that both implies the necessity and questions the fixity of all orderly arrangements in discourse. In more specific terms, in this study I argue that Don Quixote exemplifies a species ofliterary discourse that is about, for, and against literary discourse, including its own. Cervantes' fiction represents a self-conscious text that is made from other texts, and a text that is about the reading and writing of texts. Indeed, one of the fiction's chief traits is that it dramatizes a systematic yet open method of paradoxy that simultaneously affirms, denies, and enlarges the categories by which we judge and speak about the mysteries of both art and nature. Further, in its development of both character and action, the fiction enlists a specifically narrative method that relates nothing less than the paradoxicality of both literature and life, and that prevents its readers from equating either "knowledge" or "truth" about those matters with a rationalist quest for closure or formulaic certainty. What is more, as playfully dramatized in Cervantes' fictional work, the myriad manifestations of paradox emerge as variations on the problem of infinity-infinite regress, infinite series, the vicious circle, eternity-a problem that is insoluble solely within logical or linguistic terms (which invariably strive to terminate further discussion) and approachable only by way of negation. After the manner of Cervantes' text, I adopt in this study a method that relies heavily on what logicians call negative assertions, which are neither identical nor simply reducible to a denial of positive statements. 4 For logical and semantic contradiction need not be confined to a dogmatically skeptical terminus of "undecidability" and "canceling out." A further consequence of their infinite and undefinable quality is that paradoxes are also "generative" (Colie 1966,3-40). One paradoxical utterance about either literature or life necessarily gives rise to another, often its opposite, ad infinitum, thus militating against both the narrative and academic requirements of fitting one's discourse within a discernible beginning (thesis), middle (discussion) and end (conclusion). An examination of Don Quixote as a masterwork of paradoxy thus forces one to acknowledge the dual impossibility of identifying "all" the paradoxes that the text presumably "contains" or the infinite number of ways in which that text may be deemed paradoxical. Moreover, in keeping with the tradition of paradoxical discourse-which resists the tidiness of logical, linguistic, or literary form-Cervantes' long tale about its mad protagonist and about itselfas tale both begins and ends with startling abruptness. Rather than concluding, it simply comes to a halt. Put another way, the story (called a history) relates, at the start of its first chapter, how the 4. Barwise and Etchemendy (1987, 177) discuss the distinction, in both logic and semantics, between negations and negative assertions.

4

Introduction

personality known as Don Quixote "comes to life" as the product of a nameless hidalgo's deranged imagination. In this "history," more than 120 chapters are then devoted to the "adventures" that the "knight" Don Quixote undertakes until, at end of the history, "amid the sadness and tears of the persons gathered there, [Don Quixote] gave up the ghost, by which I mean that he died (entre compasiones y lagrimas de los que alli se hallaron, dio su espiritu, quiero decir que se muri6) (DQII: 74, 591).5 Likewise, what in this study takes the form of beginning, middle, and end amounts to little more than a series of somewhat arbitrary choices about where to start; what to include, expand upon, or hold in abeyance; and where, finally, to stop. The title of the present study, Adventures in Paradox: "Don Quixote" and the Western Tradition, alludes to a twofold aim. First, as stated in the preceding paragraphs, I hope to open up further rather than fill a gap in the bibliography on Don Quixote and, more generally, on the tradition of paradoxy in the West. Next, the element of "adventures" in the title, besides suggesting the ideas of quest, surprise, and escape from the humdrum for all adventurers, signals my interest in examining paradoxical novelties that accrue for both characters and readers from the fictional and extrafictional aspects of Cervantes' narrative. I shall be concerned to examine how, at their respective levels of "being," characters and readers alike engage in a series of parallel adventures, as they negotiate the paradoxes within Cervantes' fictional world. Designating the adventures of the characters and the reader as parallel implies that they are dissimilar and cannot simply be shared. To be sure, Cervantes' characters occupy their own world, or heterocosm. What for them, in their heterocosm, appears as history remains fiction for the reader of Cervantes' text. These commonplace observations become necessary, first, because I respectfully disagree with Americo Castro's sighting of "Pirandellism" within the Cervantine text (Castro 1967,477-85). The characters in Don Quixote are never in search of an author and remain blithely unaware of either their imaginary status or a world outside their heterocosm. Second, I believe that Cervantes' careful preservation of the cleavage separating the fictional and extrafictional worlds increases the selfconscious quality of his work, expands the scope of his textual paradoxes, and enhances his examination of the literature/life and history/poetry boundaries. That the narrative draws an analogy between the characters' adventures and those of the reader becomes clear from the prominence that readers, written 5. All references to Cervantes' Don Quixote are to the edition by Luis Murillo, by abbreviated title, part, chapter, and page number in instances of quotation. Hence, the above citation (DQII: 74,591) indicates Don Quixote, Part II, chapter 74, page 591.

Introduction

5

texts, and stories enjoy in the narrative. For example, in Part I, if the madness of our anonymous hidalgo and his emergence as the protagonist Don Quixote are not simply the product of his reading the romances of chivalry, the identity of that protagonist and the shape of his pseudochivalric adventures remain defined by the stories he reads and by his interpretation of those stories as histories. The prominence of readers, texts, and stories is probably nowhere more evident within the heterocosm of Part I than at Juan Palomeque's inn (DQ I: 32-47), where characters exchange their life tales, listen to the priest's reading from a discovered manuscript titled "The Tale of Impertinent Curiosity" (Novela del curioso impertinente), and voice their opinions about the merits and demerits, truth and untruth, of chivalric romance. Further, the final version of the history concerning the exploits of Don Quixote is put forth, within the fiction we have before us, as the work of a narrator-editor, necessarily a reader, who is working primarily from the manuscript attributed to Cide Hamete. In Part II of the fiction, the majority of the characters have either read or are informed about the contents of Cide Hamete's history, the fictional analogue of Miguel de Cervantes' own Don Quixote, Part I. What is important to stress here is that, in light of those allusions within the text, we can hardly avoid perceiving fictional analogues of ourselves in such readers and listeners of fictional and nonfictional tales, including a tale (for them a history, for us a fiction) about Don Quixote. And it seems that we can hardly avoid perceiving such parallels and analogies between the fictional and extrafictional planes of the work as the product of artistic design. However, it is pertinent to add that parallels between the adventures of Cervantes' characters and those of his readers possess an ethical as well as aesthetic dimension. As a prime example of literary paradoxy, Don Quixote is a seriocomic book. Within Cervantes' heterocosm, all his characters' "lives" include interpretations regarding the deeds of other characters, material items (e.g., windmills, fulling mills, basins, "helmets," or "basin-helmets"), stories, manuscripts, and at least one "historical" narrative. About these matters, Cervantes' characters emit a host of judgments-which vary in their degree of wisdom and folly-and later act upon those judgments. Their spoken judgments and actions, including their actions as interpreters, are integral to their characterization, reflecting upon them for good or ill-usually ill. In their encounter with Cervantes' fictional text, readers may come to realize that their own conduct as interpreters of the tale and its protagonist likewise characterizes them, and that their reading and judging what occurs within the heterocosm amounts to their observing an analogue of their own extrafictional drama as readers and judges. The similarities between characters and readers-between the heterocosm and the historical world-point to the

6

Introduction

creating intelligence of a self-conscious author who makes each reader both accomplice and nemesis in a complex, metaliterary game. The boundary between cosmos and heterocosm, or literature and life, is alternately confirmed and undone, thanks in no small measure to the preservation of a fictional frame-a frame that allows the text to function as a mirror of its own readings. In order to examine the analogous adventures in paradox that accrue for both readers and characters throughout Don Quixote, I have divided my study into two parts, which encompass five chapters. Part I, "Western Paradox and the Spanish Golden Age," encompasses Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 1, I explore the development of paradoxy in the West from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance, paying special attention to three pivotal texts: Plato's Parmenides, Nicolaus Cusanus's OfLearned Ignorance and Erasmus's The Praise ofFolly. After discussing how the term paradox was understood in Cervantes' time and how it is understood in our own, I focus in Chapter 2 on the slow rise of paradoxy in Spain's Renaissance, as exemplified, particularly, in popular works by Fernando de Rojas, Antonio de Guevara and Pero Mexia. For it was not until the beginning of the Baroque period that Spain underwent what Colie dubs an "epidemic" of paradoxy, already pandemic in the rest of Europe (Colie 1966). Poised between the Spanish Renaissance and the Baroque, Cervantes' thoroughgoing paradoxy in Don Quixote marks the infectious beginning of a literary epidemic that will persist until the advent of the eighteenth century. Now it may seem, at first blush, that the historical reconstruction of Western paradoxical discourse in those first two chapters constitutes an overlong preamble to an exploration of Cervantes' rhetorical strategy in Don Quixote. In response, let me first point out that, as indicated in my title, the topic of this book-length study is not simply the rhetoric of Cervantes' masterwork, but the place of that rhetoric and that work within the formerly unreconstructed tradition of paradoxy in the West. Second, as I found in the process of composing this text, to have started my discussion with the practice of paradoxy in Cervantes' own age would have required me to keep explaining this rhetorical-poetic tradition in a piecemeal, desultory fashion. This would have blurred the outline of what is already a complex argument about a complex subject. Indeed, what I hope to contribute to the field ofliterary studies in general and Cervantes studies in particular is an increased understanding of how the Spanish Renaissance and, with Cervantes intervening, the Spanish Baroque remain indebted to and riddled with devices of paradoxical discourse inherited from a centuries-long praxis. More practically, for readers interested specifically in Don Quixote, the historical reconstruction constituting this book's Part I is an effort to provide a coher-

Introduction

7

ent, if selective, view of what Cervantes had at his literary disposition in crafting his great work. In Part II of this study, "Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self," I focus exclusively on Don Quixote, but without attempting a comprehensive reading of Cervantes' text. Adopting a method of non multa sed multum, I undertake a detailed analysis of selected episodes in that fictional work that illustrate a Cervantine vision of both artistic creation and the human subject. To this end, in Chapter 3 I examine a cluster of metaliterary issues against the backdrop of the Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I (1605). Those issues, which Cervantes both dramatizes and thematizes throughout his work, concern the complex and fluid relations between art and nature, literature and life, poetry and history, as well as author, reader and text. I argue in this chapter that, as both preface and epilogue to the subsequent narrative, the Prologue of 1605 represents a fictional work in nonfictional guise. That Prologue is also shown to form an integral part of the fiction Don Quixote. Let me add at once, however, that in Chapter 3 I make no attempt either to extricate a Cervantine theory of fiction from the text or to contrast Cervantes' theoretical stance with the classical opinions that held sway among many of his contemporaries both in Spain and abroad. At best, such an attempt would merely duplicate the important work of E. C. Riley (1962) and Alban K. Forcione (1970).6 Rather, my interest lies in discussing how the Prologue of 1605 broaches important metaliterary questions and how those questions are dramatized and played out more fully, as questions, and as instances ofliterary paradoxy, in other parts of the text. Cervantes' dramatization of the overlap and interference between art and life yields what I discuss, in Chapter 4, as "Paradoxes of Imitation." In the Renaissance and Baroque alike, art was understood in both the Aristotelian sense as an "imitation of nature" and in a Ciceronian sense as an "imitation of models." Though seemingly at odds, both acceptations of the term were seen as complementary and inseparable. Moreover, it was only in a debased sense that artistic imitation (imitatio) was undertaken as, say, copying or aping. In its ideal form, imitatio was understood to involve inventio, from invenire, which means both "to invent" and "to discover." Artistic imitation was understood to be, at the same time, transformative and perfective. Hence, in Chapter 4, I shall examine three types of paradox that arise from how Cervantes dramatizes Renaissance imitatio in a seriocomic fashion: (1) the need somehow to combine what today we would call "originality" with a dependence on "the original"; (2) how each inventive imi6. Also in reference to Cervantes' aesthetics of fiction, see Martinez Bonati 1992; Avalle-Arce and Riley 1973, 293-322; and two other studies by Riley (1981, 69-85; 1986,62-72).

8

Introduction

tation strives somehow to be truer to "nature," "life," and the "source" than its predecessors, which may in turn be its "models"; (3) how art involves the power to embed imitations within imitations-stories within stories, plays within plays, pictures within pictures-whereby each successive act of embedding seems to create a level of imitation that is somehow less real or more imaginary. Yet it is important to stress that, in Don Quixote, Cervantes' playful imitations are also in earnest. Indeed, Cervantes elaborates on a traditional link between artistic imitation and moral exemplarity in order to dramatize imitatio as both an ethical and aesthetic issue. In Chapter 5 I discuss paradoxes of self-knowledge and self-creation and the degree to which Cervantes shows that an individual life both is and is not a work of fiction, or of linguistic and literary art. There, in particular, we shall analyze the link that Cervantes establishes between self-awareness and "self-fashioning" in the episodes he devotes to Don Quixote's encounter with Don Diego de Miranda: a secondary character whose physical appearance, age, regional origin, and social status make him at once "mirror," "model," and "copy" of the protagonist.? In that encounter, we find that "knowledge" of "self" is dynamic rather than static. It arises as a quasi-poetic undertaking and a paradoxical process of inventio and imitatio: a creative dialogue between "self" and "other." In the same vein, in the Concluding Remarks I discuss Cervantes' seriocomic system of paradoxy as a "committed rhetoric," with ethical implications. In affirming the necessiry while questioning the fixity of our arrangements of thought and language, Cervantes' paradoxy allows us to forestall what we may dub a "hardening of the categories" in both our personal and collective lives. The paradoxy that informs Don Quixote at once parodies, celebrates, and invites reflection on the wisdom and folly of the fictions we live by. At the level of content and form alike, in Don Quixote Cervantes enlists human discourse in order to dramatize its agency in the continuing creation, or re-creation, of such artistic endeavors as history, knowledge, and the self

7. Stephen Greenblatt (1980) provides a searching study of self-fashioning in the English Renaissance. Like Michel Foucault before him, Greenblatt derives this term from Montaigne.

W STERN PARADOX AND T SPANISH GOLDEN AGE

E

Paradoxical Discourse from Antiquity to the Renaissance Plato, Nicolaus Cusanus, and Erasmus

In her groundbreaking study Paradoxia Epidemica (1966), Rosalie Colie provides a topical and historical overview of literary paradoxy from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance. Neither her overview nor her studies of such Renaissance practitioners of literary paradoxy as Rabelais, Petrarch, Sidney, Donne, Shakespeare, and Burton need to be summarized or repeated here. Since the concern of this study is largely topical-paradox in Don Quixote and its Spanish antecedents-I shall invoke Colie only for background material. Moreover, the historical side of my discussion will draw from the rich tradition of paradoxy to spotlight three landmark texts: Plato's Parmenides, Nicolaus Cusanus's Of Learned Ignorance, and Erasmus's Praise of Folly. All three represent major advances in that tradition and illuminate important features of paradoxy in Don Quixote. 1 1. It is not a question here of citing "sources" or influence in Cervantes' work. Rather, I claim only that these and other works form an integral part of a philosophical, rhetorical, and literary patrimony.

12

Western Paradox and the Spanish Golden Age

From Plato to Saint Francis of Assisi: Paradoxy in Antiquity and the Middle Ages fu Colie points out, Plato's Parmenides represents one of the chief sources of paradox literature, and rhetorical paradoxy, in the West (1966, 7-8).2 In a manner that typifies exchanges in paradoxical discourse, our dialogue elicits a response of wonder, bewilderment, and perplexity in the reader. This is so not only because of the dialogue's rhetorical mastery, its seemingly interminable litany of paradoxical utterances, and its inconclusive ending, but also because a young Socrates suffers defeat at the hands of the sage Parmenides in their dialectical contest. Besides dealing with the eminently philosophical questions of unity and diversity, likeness and unlikeness, and being and nonbeing, the dialogue provides a model of Plato's dialectical art, including a practical model for the training of novices. fu Parmenides says to Socrates: "There is an art which is called by the vulgar 'idle talking,' and which is often imagined to be useless; in that art you must train yourself, now that you are young, or truth will elude your grasp" (Plato 1973,379). Parmenides goes on to demonstrate that in negative terms, this art consists of avoiding the "youthful" impulse to dogmatism. In positive terms, it consists of simultaneously arguing opposite sides of a question. Truth is thus shown to reside not so much between as beyond extremes, each of which is both enlightening and deficient, both partially true and partially false. To be sure, the Parmenides is largely an abstract exercise, whose chief interest arises from the substance of its ideas, discussed by characterological types. Yet, for that very reason, a brief, anecdotal moment of human interest stands out in the text. After praising the young Socrates' desire to pursue the truth, and gently criticizing the youth's inclination to seek pat answers to complex problems, Parmenides balks at Socrates' request to demonstrate the dialectical method of a mature philosopher. For not only is the master advanced in years, but the demonstration would require a physical effort that is shown, as the dialogue progresses, to resemble a contest between two athletes, as in wrestling, boxing, or-anachronistically, yet more relevant to Cervantes' time and rhetorical practice-fencing. Following its proliferation of paradoxes, stated and implied, the Parmenides reaches the disconcerting "conclusion" that, in truth, it is of little moment whether This patrimony could have reached Cervantes and his contemporaries through a nearly countless number of sources, ranging from manuals in logic and rhetoric to works of philosophy and literature. At; discussed in the following chapter, Spain underwent its own "epidemic" of paradox, of which Don Quixote is an extreme and unique case in point. 2. Although I draw on Colie's insights, my discussion here of Plato's dialogue takes a different form from Colie's and highlights different elements of the philosophical text.

Paradoxical Discourse from Antiquity to the Renaissance

13

one affirms or negates the idea of the One: the radical unity of existence in the cosmos, encompassing all existents that merely "have" or receive their being. In any event, what one can "affirm" is that all existing beings both "are and are not." For, as observable and observed, they "seem to be" and "seem not to be" at the same time. The One, which is coterminous with everything as a whole, or as all in all, "appears" under the guises of both nothing and all things. fu ultimate truth, the One therefore is and is not, does and does not exist. Indeed, the One lies beyond "being," understood here as temporal existence, which implies subjection to change, decay, and surcease. It also "resides" or has its (non)being in no place. Additionally, it is shown to lie beyond the reach of dialectical and linguistic categories that involve statements of either true or false, as set forth in the dialogue's final assertion of truth in strictly negative terms: [Parmenides]: Let this much be said; and further let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether [the] one is or is not, one and the others [multiplicity of beings] in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, appear to be and appear not to be. [Socrates]: Most true. (1973,424) In the Parmenides, one finds an example of paradoxical discourse in its barest and most abstract form. The dizzying array of paradoxes comprising the dialogue's content, together with the rhetorical command governing its form, serve to bring one to a state of reverence and awe in the face of mystery within the nontextual space, and to a pause of silence, which follow the dialogue's reading or recitation. What are in every sense the "apparent" contradictions of paradox find resolution outside the confines of time, space, and discourse, in the realm of mystery or of superrational and ineffable truth. Through discourse, the categories of logic and language succeed where they fail: appearing in order to vanish, signifying mystery through the nonsignifying method of pure negation, sometimes called the via negativa. fu in the other Platonic dialogues, the Parmenides' dialectical contest between opponents and opposing views unfolds as a civilized debate-the playful, regulated conflict of competitive sport. If both contestants cannot strictly be victors, they can pursue, as friendly rivals, a mutually enriching sense of delight in the context of a serious game. Such "idle talking" is best suited to the treatment of ultimate questions, fulfilling a playful-sacred purpose. 3 Notably lacking in Plato's dialogue, however, are the self-reference and self-conscious attitude that 3. Classic studies on the centrality, even sacredness, of seemingly "idle" activity and "play" in culture are Huizinga 1970 and Pieper 1963.

14

Western Paradox and the Spanish Golden Age

will characterize works of Renaissance paradoxy, or Cervantes' Don Quixote. Even so, Plato's use of paradox is consonant with the height of Socratic wisdom, achieved by dint of painstaking study: namely, the self-awareness that entails knowing only that one (comprehensively) knows nothing. It is hardly surprising that this work of Plato should have become one of the seminal texts of Western mysticism (Klibansky 1939, 281-330). Written in Plato's mature years, the dialogue is most often seen as a confident defense of his famous ideal philosophy, which understands earthly existence as a world of shadows, appearances, and mere imitations of eternal ideas, thus rendering all works of art imitations of imitations. 4 Neither is it surprising that, in such a defense, Plato should enlist the figure of Parmenides, whose own philosophy consists of critical reflections on the cosmology of both Empedocles and Heraclitus. With different emphases, these last two philosophers described the multiple, sensible manifestations of cosmic unity (the One) as the result of a continuing contest between contrary forces. Parmenides, for whom no middle ground was possible between the claims of being and nonbeing, judged becoming and plurality to be illusions. For him, both change and individual beings constituted visible, surface phenomena that both reveal and, to uncritical minds, conceal invisible "truth." For Parmenides, and so for Plato, the wakeful way of Truth opposes the way of Opinion that prevails among the "sleepwalking" masses (Swearingen 1991, 22-94). The first justification for this excursus into the ideas of ancient philosophers is surely their preoccupation with "reality" beneath "appearance." Additionally, their assessment of the visible world as a composite of struggling contraries established both the thematics and the pattern that we find in all paradoxical discourse. Indeed, writing most of their philosophy in the form of either a literary dialogue or verse, Plato and his philosophical precursors represent the first Western figures to use such discourse in both a rhetorical and poetic fashion. More specifically, however, we are justified in discussing their doctrines and their rhetorical figuration because they represent the acknowledged sources of that Neoplatonist cosmology that formed part of Cervantes' intellectual climate, and that labeled nature as discordant concord (discordia concors). In an article that is not specifically concerned with Don Quixotes paradoxical rhetoric, Leland Chambers asserts that this Neoplatonist view of nature represents a governing "esthetic principle" in Cervantes' "novel of ideas" (as against a novel of character or action) (1981, 605-15). Leaving aside whether the Quixote 4. In his discussion of the chronology of Plato's dialogues, Copleston makes specific reference to the purpose of the Parmenides (1985, 135-41),

Paradoxical Discourse from Antiquity to the Renaissance

15

is such a "novel," or whether the "controlling idea" is the moral and salvific one that Chambers claims it is, one can certainly agree that, generally speaking, the Neoplatonist formulation accurately describes Cervantes' artistic simulacra of "nature" and "life." One may also claim, in agreement with Chambers, that a Neoplatonist view of nature as discordia concors and as a coincidence of opposites derives from such ancient sources as Plutarch and Plotinus and is transmitted to Renaissance writers through Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola (1981, 607). To the ancient sources, however, one should add the negative theology found in Pseudo-Dionysius's The Divine Names. This work, which scholars have recently placed within the sixth century, presents its pseudonymous author's "harmonious" view of nature. It includes, as well, the first systematic formulation of the via negativa that greatly influenced the philosophy and mysticism of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 5 Furthermore, the conception of nature according to musical metaphors (harmonia, discordia, concordia)-the image, that is, of a musica mundana, which continued to thrive in works by Renaissance and Baroque poets alike-originated in the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato's Timaeus, reaching both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through the De Institutione Musica of Boethius (Eco 1986,30-33).6 In short, one can use this Neoplatonist formulation to describe an exceedingly disparate group of aesthetic and philosophical principles that inform the writings of nearly every artist, rhetorician, or philosopher from the early Renaissance to the late Baroque periods. To choose an extreme example, the presumed principle of unity in diversity, discordia concors, and the coincidence of opposites applies equally to the cosmological reflections of such an incongruous pair of writers as the Christian humanist Fray Luis de Granada and the pantheist philosopher Giordano Bruno. It is therefore true, as Chambers claims, that Cervantes' literary cosmos portrays the world of human action as an instance of unity in diversity and a coincidence 5. Pseudo-Dionysius's tlueefold method for "naming" God consists of (1) predicating of him the perfections found in creatures (via affirmativa); (2) denying in him all creaturely limitations (via negativa); and (3) affirming of him these same perfections, but to an eminent, ineffable degree (via eminentis), which ultimately amounts to a negative assertion of the divine essence (a nameless name). Ironically enough, with this ancient, pseudonymous Christian author--confused in the Middle Ages with the disciple of Saint Paul who bore the same name-the problematic character of naming becomes an especially common feature of paradoxical writing. To be sure, the problematics of naming that spring from the tradition of paradoxical writing are fully exploited in Cervantes' works, most notably regarding his protagonist in Don Quixote. An excellent synopsis of Pseudo-Dionysus's thought is that of Copleston (1972, 50-54). Eco discusses Pseudo-Dionysus's equally paradoxical conception of nature and natural beauty (1986, 18). 6. Especially interesting in this regard is Eco's summary of John Scorns Eriugena's perception of natural beauty: "[Tlhe beauty of creation was due to a consonance of similars and dissimilars" (1986,33).

16

Western Paradox and the Spanish Golden Age

of opposites. Yet such an assertion simply represents another way of saying that Cervantes shared the worldview of his age. Nonetheless, my purpose in relating the Platonist doctrine to Don Quixote is to underscore how Cervantes reworked what was already a philosophical and artistic commonplace, traceable to a literary-philosophical tradition that originated in ancient Greece. Besides the Platonic dialogues, another important group of works within the rhetorical tradition of paradoxy in ancient Greece belong to the elusive category of Menippean satire. In recent times, the scholars who most extensively discuss Menippean satire as an expansive "genre" of considerable importance in the development of the modern novel are Northrop Frye (1973, 309-14) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1984, 112-21). Named after the Greek writer Menippus whose works are no longer extant, the satirical form was employed in ancient Rome by Varro, Petronius (Satyricon) and Apuleius (The Golden Ass or The Metamorphoses). A near contemporary of Apuleius who wrote within the same tradition was the Greek satirist Lucian, whom Erasmus openly acknowledges to be one of the sources of his own satirical writings. It was through Erasmus that Lucian's satirical methods were made known to Spain's Christian humanists and also to Cervantes. As shown in the development of Menippean satire, paradoxy certainly flourished in ancient Rome, with varying degrees of artistry, but followed the tradition already established by the Greeks. Paradoxes concerning the enigmatic psychology of human love such as those found in Ovid and in Catullus's famous "odi et amo" are, of course, a constant in literature of virtually all ages and places and informed both the medieval and Renaissance traditions of courtly and chivalric love. As Colie observes, amorous paradoxes occurred to an unprecedented degree in the sonnets that Petrarch (1304-74) addressed to Laura. And it was primarily through these sonnets that Petrarch established the literary conventions for Renaissance writings on matters of the heart, in much the same way that he set the fundamental pattern for all Renaissance literature and scholarship.? The precedent for a paradox-oriented criticism of social ethics is established in Cicero's Paradoxa stoicorum--a clear favorite among Renaissance humanists. Though original in form, the work's content amounts to an elegant compendium of moral commonplaces, posed as rhetorical questions. Furthermore, these questions seem "paradoxical" only to the extent that Cicero contrasts them, satiri7. A detailed discussion of the paradoxes associated with literary treatments of love, either in poetry or in prose, is a virtually interminable one, clearly beyond the scope of this study. On Petrarch's psychological paradoxes of love and self-reference, see Colie 1966, 72-89. For a sound treatment of the literature of love in Spain, with particular reference to the Golden Age, see Parker 1985; for a specific discussion of Cervantes' "philosophy of love," see Parker 1985, 113-26. For a recent discussion of Petrarch's intellectual legacy in other fields, see Kelley 1991, 7-11.

Paradoxical Discourse from Antiquity to the Renaissance

17

cally, with the hypocrisy and immorality that he perceives in his Roman contemporaries (Colie 1966, 11-14). Besides the perennial paradoxes of love poetry, including the special case of the Proven Antonio Vilanova has observed with considerable erudition, Cervantes' terminology and imagery relating to authorial "paternity" in the Prologue, and especially the phrase about the narrator's being the stepfather instead of the father of Don Quixote, evoke several passages in Erasmus's Folly (Vilanova 1965, 425-26). Unlike Vilanova, however, I do not read the relevant segments of Cervantes' Prologue as a mere echo of Erasmus's humanist doctrines, which Vilanova seems to equate with ethical and aesthetic topoi in the writings of both authors. 23 Furthermore, as is evident from the genesis and characterization of Don Quixote in the narrative, the issue of authorial and artistic "paternity" is not limited to the Prologue, but permeates the entire work. In the relevant passage of Erasmus's paradoxical and parodic masterpiece, the character of Folly speaks about Nature as truly a mother who, in but one particular, resembles or acts like a stepmother. In the translation of Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, Folly proclaims: "[Nlature, in many respects a stepmother rather than a mother, has sowed some seed of evil in the breasts of mortal men, and particularly of

22. The restoration of chivalry's Golden Age as the crux of Don Quixote's quest is argued with cogency and erudition in Williamson 1984. 23. Vilanova suggests that Cervantes' twofold purpose in borrowing his phrase from Erasmus is to illustrate that "paternal love does not blind him to such an extent that he ignores his work's defects or that he expects others to forgive or conceal the defects it possesses" (que no Ie ciega el amor paternal hasta el punto de ignorar los defectos de su obra y de pretender que los demis perdonen 0 disimulen los defectos que posee) (1965, 426).

118

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

men somewhat judicious, which makes them dissatisfied with what is their own, while admiring what belongs to another" (Erasmus 1974,28-29). In keeping with both her character and her "philosophy," Folly goes on to note that the best remedy against despising what is one's own and envying what belongs to others is found, paradoxically, in unbridled self-love (philautia). Lacking this quality (one of Folly's handmaids), a person is incapable of doing anything "pleasing or graceful or seemly." As Folly further states: "Take this ingredient from life, and at once the orator, like his style, will be flat and cold, the musician will be as sour as his notes, the actor, with all his mimicry, will be hissed from the stage." Significantly, however, Folly later observes that the mother who implanted the defect also supplies the remedy: "Oh, the singular foresight of nature, who, in spite of such differences of condition, equalizes all things! Where she has withheld some of her bounties, there she is wont to add a little more self-love" (1974,29). In other words, if in some respects nature resembles a stepmother, in others she reveals herself to be a mother. Broadly speaking, Cervantes' Prologue and Erasmus's most renowned fiction show similarities of both imagery and theme. Both writings employ filial, generative, and familial analogies, and both writings treat of artists' or rhetoricians' regard for their handiwork. But Cervantes subjects Erasmus's image of mother nature's occasionally resembling a stepmother-an image that Erasmus derives from both Pliny and Quintilian-to a double reversal. 24 In the first place, Cervantes transforms the contrast between mother and stepmother (madrelmadrastra) into one between father and stepfather (padrelpadrastro). In the second place, besides this change of "sex" and gender, Cervantes has his narrator claim that he, the narrator, seems to be (parezco) the parent (padre), though he is truly the stepparent (soy padrastro). Furthermore, as against his creator, the ingenuous narrator of the Prologue seems to mean his words unambiguously. The allusion to Erasmus, to be sure, most plausibly represents an instance of dramatic irony that belongs not to the narrator's, but to the author's, utterance. For the narrator praises rather than censures his stepson, the knight called Don Quixote. And that narrator claims no responsibility at all for having "sowed" a defective "seed" in the hidalgo. In light of his allusion to Erasmus through the propositional "statements" and voice of his narrator, Cervantes seems to call our attention to his having made his protagonist/son an object of ridicule for readers and characters alike. He also calls our attention to his having endowed his "ingenious hidalgo" with a glaring defect-a seemingly contradictory species of humoral imbalance (choleric 24. At; Miller notes in his translation of Erasmus's Folly, the phrase derives from Quintilian, Institutiones oratoriae, 12.1.2, and from Pliny, Historia naturalis, 7.1 (Erasmus 1979,34 n. 2).

"This Is Not a Prologue"

119

melancholy), disposing him to an equally paradoxical type of madness (life as literature). Interestingly, too, an important element contributing to Don Quixote's losing his "wits" (juicio) finds expression in the protagonist's continual attempts to resolve such contrived paradoxes (antinomies) and equivocations as found in the works by the popular Spanish author Feliciano de Silva: "With these words [literally: "reasons" or the seventeenth-century Spanish equivalent of logoi] the poor knight lost his wits and spent long evenings trying to understand them and draw out their meaning" (Con estas razones perdia el pobre caballero el juicio, y desvelabase por entenderlas y desentrafiarles el sentido) (DQ I: 1, 72). In creating this less than ideal reader afflicted with a less than ideal insomnia, the author, Cervantes, seems to act more like his protagonist's stepfather than his "father." Furthermore, in a way that seems far more extreme than the narrator's apparently detached attitude toward his "historical" book (his "son"), the author builds his fictional narrative upon his protagonist's flaws, and never resorts to pleading "tearfully" that we overlook them. But does the author, like Folly's assessment of "mother nature," finally reveal himself a "parent," and supply his main character with some remedy for the latter's flaws? Or does the author consistently show his protagonist to be nothing but a madman, a fool, and thus an object of ridicule? Let me suggest that an important insight into this question, which has divided many critics of the Quixote for the past hundred years, may also found in the Prologue of 1605. At bottom, I think it hasty to claim that Cervantes acts simply as either a "father" or a "stepfather," or that he makes his protagonist a consistent object of either praise or censure. An inventive and critical contribution to the humanist tradition, Cervantes' work represents a highly complex variation on the mock encomium, though his subject is not the allegorical character of Folly, but a particular, paradoxical "fool." To return to the first section of the Prologue, it is already implicit in the words of the narrator that one's judgment of the protagonist will vary according to whether one perceives him as a crazed hidalgo or a noble knight or, finally, somewhere between or even beyond those categorical extremes. To be sure, the so-called hard or negative view of the protagonist is not reserved for literary critics alone. The vast majority of characters in the work, ranging from those who show genuine concern for the protagonist to those who aim only to divert themselves at his expense, would clearly agree that Don Quixote is nothing but a lunatic hidalgo. Such is the view, for instance, of the hidalgo's niece, his housekeeper, the curate Pero Perez, and the barber maese Nicolas. This is also the view of, say, the duke and duchess, their servants at the palace, and Sanson Carrasco. Though oblivious to the narrator's self-serving distinction between the hidalgo and the knight, the factually oriented history

120

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

attributed to Cide Hamete contains, in the main, a host of unflattering judgments and descriptions of what are portrayed as the protagonist's follies. Hence Don Quixote's rejection of that history's ultimate "truth." For very different reasons, of course, Sancho is shown to be equally uninterested in determining whether his master is truly a knight-errant (whatever that term means for Sancho) or a crazed hidalgo. Yet, very briefly put, the squire's complex relationship with Don Quixote includes that illiterate peasant's admiration for the knight's presumed learning and wisdom, combined with impatience and mockery regarding Don Quixote's lunacy. In short, according to all the foregoing perspectives, Don Quixote is either nothing but, or little more than, a crazed hidalgo. By contrast, aside from Don Quixote himself, the only character (or, perhaps, the only perspective) in the narrative explicitly adhering to what we may call a soft view of the protagonist and his chivalric ethos is the "second author" (segundo autor), a narrative voice emerging at the start of I, 8. As I explore more fully in the following chapter of this study, that "second author" seems to consider Don Quixote nothing but a noble, heroic knight. Finally, however, a minority view prevails among those characters who seem willing to engage in a respectful dialogue with Don Quixote, and who are apt to find a truly startling measure (provoking admiratio) of cogency in his words, if less often in his deeds. Most notably, such characters include the Canon of Toledo, Don Diego de Miranda, the latter's son, Don Lorenzo, and the inhabitants of the "feigned Arcadia"-all of whom are reported as either judging or explicitly calling the protagonist a puzzling type of sane madman (cuerdo loco).25 Which, if any, of these assessments does the author finally represent to be the "true" portrait of his protagonist? On the one hand, I would contend that none of the ideologies represented in characters or perspectives casting judgment on Don Quixote is shown to be "exemplary," or beyond criticism. To varying degrees, most characters become ensnared in the fictive categories of their own discourse. Indeed, in the manner of a "stepfather," Cervantes seems to have implanted some defect of judgment in 25. At; we read in the "history": "The canon was astonished at the cogent nonsense that Don Quixote had spoken (Admirado qued6 el can6nigo de los concertados disparates que don Quijote habia dicho) (DQ I: 50, 588; emphasis added). In similar fashion: "Once again father and son [Don Diego and Don Lorenzo] were astonished at the blend of sense and nonsense of Don Quixote's words" (De nuevo se admiraron padre y hijo [don Diego y don Lorenzo] de Ids entremetidas razones de don Quijote, ya discretas y ya disparatadas) (DQ II: 18, 177; emphasis added). And, concerning the reaction of the "shepherds and shepherdesses" in the "Feigned Arcadia," the protagonist is shown "leaving his listeners in a state of astonishment, leading them to doubt whether they should take him to be sane or mad' (dejando admirados a los circunstantes, haciendoles dudar si Ie podian tener por loco 0 por cuerdo) (DQII: 58,480; emphasis added). Interestingly, these characters all react to Don Quixote with astonishment, wonder, or "alienation" (admiratio) rather than laughter.

"This Is Not a Prologue"

121

almost every character and perspective that appears in his work. On the other hand, not all judgments are shown to be defective in the same manner and to the same extent. Hence it seems that no character can be labeled simply as the author's spokesperson or his foil. Nonetheless, those characters who dub the protagonist a "sane madman" (cuerdo loco) are shown to be capable of attentive dialogue and, in Erasmian fashion, to be capable of discerning wisdom in folly, and nobility in apparent lowliness. As to the other characters, a lack of critical intelligence utterly discredits the judgments of Pero Perez, maese Nicolas, the housekeeper, the niece, and the "second author" on matters of wisdom, learning, or perhaps even simple logic. Likewise, idleness and self-indulgence-sometimes resulting in cruel mockery and injustice-discredits the judgments of characters such as the duke and duchess or Sans6n Carrasco on matters of moral wisdom or ethical "nobility." In each case, the manner in which a character treats the protagonist (or his "history") reflects that character's worth as a judge, reader, and moral agent. Don Quixote is, indeed, the paradoxical agency-some sort of madman by any estimation-whereby Cervantes forces his other characters to prove, and perhaps to face, the shortcomings of their own "philosophical" and moral judgments. Significantly, the "hard" characters, like the "soft" "second author," are shown to be incapable of self-reflection. By extension, through the agency of a fiction about a protagonist and his history, the author invites his readers to examine, or leads them to reveal, the underpinnings of their own aesthetic and ethical categories. So to speak, the author's artistic paternity seemingly obliges him, at the same time, to act in the manner of what Folly would call a stepfather. For if Don Quixote represents a fool whose laughable and often harmful exploits parody a facile understanding of virtue and "heroism," the innocent nobility and wisdom informing his lunacy remind attentive listeners (readers) of ideals that their society is striving to forget, placing a mirror before myriad ideologies, discourses, and fictions that enjoy the official status of "sanity." Furthermore, in Cervantes' Prologue, as in Erasmus's Folly, the issue of an artist's acceptance or rejection of his own handiwork occurs in the context of a discussion about selfhate and self love, which can lead to extreme utterances of either self-censure or self-praise. For both Erasmus and Cervantes, it seems that Folly's assessment of the "defect" and its remedy is not so much false as partial and simplistic. An unstated defect afflicting Folly, Don Quixote, and Cervantes' other characters, including the narrator of the Prologue, is a paradoxical excess of both self-love and self-hate that issues from a lack of self-knowledge and self-reflection. Such characters become the object of their author's complex parody. As both "father" and "stepfather," the author portrays how-regarding his book, his characters,

122

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

and especially his protagonist-their virtues remain bound up with their vices, their flaws with their strengths. In particular, despite the narrator's spurious distinctions, and despite the disclaimer of the character claiming to be nothing but "Alonso Quijano the Good" on his deathbed, the crazed hidalgo is inseparable from the "noble knight." As broached through the one-sided and hackneyed discourse of his narrator in the Prologue, what the author sets forth for his readers' reflection, in both the "history" and character of Don Quixote, is an aesthetic and ethical paradox that calls for continual self-examination and continual reassessment of accepted commonplaces and received opinion (doxa). Predictably enough, Cervantes can hardly avoid relating such an ethical and aesthetic "lesson" to his own circumstance as "creator" of the paradoxical Prologue, book, and protagonist that we confront in the pages of Don Quixote. As "stepfather," Cervantes seems purposely to implant defects within his protagonist and so his entire fiction. As "father," however, he shows those defects to be the source of his protagonist's, and his fiction's, strength and admiratio. Likewise, from the standpoint of historical "truth," Cervantes is the literal "author" and metaphorical "father" of a specific tale and a specific protagonist: Don Quixote and Don Quixote. Yet, as he indicates through his narrator in the Prologue, the empirical Cervantes, in a sense, remains as much an editorl"stepfather" as any other "author." For even the most inventive imitator or "composer" (componedor) must adopt and transform existing models, or existing forms of historical and poetic discourse, in order to "beget" or "bear" textual offspring.

Idle Readers as Active Authors Cervantes' handling of general aesthetic issues in the first section of the Prologue points to the self-conscious and parodic dramatization of his own dilemma as an author compelled to write a Prologue for his book, and as the author compelled to write this Prologue for this book. From the first words of his Prologue, the author seems to strike an ambivalent rhetorical posture toward his Prologue and book's potential readership. Yet, once again, the author communicates his attitude of ambivalence, and the paradoxes informing the reader-author relation, by means of his narrator's theoretical and practical contradictions, or antinomies. In light of the author's ruse concerning his own identity, it seems both fitting and odd that the Prologue should begin with an assertion of the narrator's reliability: "Idle/leisured reader, without my swearing an oath you may believe me' ("Desocupado lector, sin juramento me podrds creer") (DQ I: Prologue, 50; empha-

"This Is Not a Prologue"

123

sis added). Indirectly, this narrator tries to guarantee his credibility through the solemnity of an oath. He does so by using the trope of paralipsis, whereby the addresser manages to emphasize an idea by seeming to pass over it (e.g., "without my swearing an oath" [sin juramento]). If viewed as part of the author's utterance, the narrator's opening "statement" both dramatizes and parodies the traditional need of any writer or rhetorician to establish his or her credentials of reliability and competence (ethos), thus eliciting the "proper" emotional response (pathos) of sympathy, confidence, and trust from the audience. In short, beginning with these words, it seems plausible to read the two paragraphs belonging to the first section of the Prologue, addressed to the "idle/leisured reader," as the author's parody of a standard captatio benevolentiae. In large measure, Cervantes' parody of that tradition serves to dramatize what is perhaps the latent desire of all authors to produce the perfect book and their apparent obligation, in essence, to denounce what they consider to be their good, if imperfect, attempts. No doubt, an author's decision to write and publish a book at all proves that he or she thinks it worthy of the reader's attention and, thus, worthy of praise. As the author strives to fulfill contradictory obligations of ethosdenouncing one's work, while calling attention to its value-convention and decorum require that he or she also avoid the twin evils of arrogance and affected modesty. Thus, in his parody, Cervantes has his narrator strive yet fail on all counts. That character's attempt and failure in this regard begins when he naively expresses two impossible wishes and the reasons for their remaining unfulfilled. First, after asking his reader to believe him "without my swearing an oath," the narrator states that he "would wish" (quisiera) that his book might prove to be "the most beautiful, the most graceful and the wittiest book that one could ever imagine' (el mas hermoso, el mas gallardo y mas discreto que pudiera imaginarse) (DQ I: Prologue, 50; emphasis added). Stating more "truth" about that impossibility than he seems to realize, the narrator lapses into affected modesty when he points to the cause of his presumed "failure": "But I have been unable to thwart the laws of Nature" (Pero no he podido yo contravenir al orden de naturaleza). It is in his equally affected corollary-significantly, a rhetorical question-where he makes only token mention of his barren, uncultivated wit: " And so, what could my sterile, uncultivated intellect beget but a history about a shriveled son?" (yas!, Nue podra engendrar el esteril y mal cultivado ingenio m!o sino la historia de un hijo seco?) (DQ I: Prologue, 50). Moreover, here he seems to blame the story's defects on the hidalgo or "shriveled son" (hijo seco) who, it turns out, is not the narrator's creation, or "son of his intellect." The narrator concludes his failed attempt at expressing modesty with a hackneyed image of how an author's love for his intellectual progeny will blind him to its defects:

124

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

"It sometimes happens that a father will have an ugly son, utterly lacking in social graces, and yet the love he bears toward that son will place a blindfold over his eyes so that he fails to see his son's flaws" (Acontece tener un padre un hijo feo y sin gracia alguna, y el amor que Ie tiene Ie pone una venda en los ojos para que no vea sus faltas) (DQI: Prologue, 50). It is noteworthy, however, that the narrator should speak about an undetermined father, thus failing to say that this image of a doting father (un padre) reflects his own bias in favor of his book. Indeed, despite his willingness to utter a series of conventional phrases favoring authorial modesty in general, it seems that the narrator cannot bring himself to acknowledge that either he or this particular book suffer from any shortcomings. In other words, he seems unable to acknowledge that he has failed to produce not the perfect protagonist, but the perfect book. Following his expression of the most ingenuous of authorial desires, the narrator's first paragraph therefore fails either to argue effectively for the value of his book or to acknowledge that book's possible defects. Additionally, the narrator's failed attempts at modesty are shown to arise from his resistance to self-criticism and his naive belief that what is desirable (the perfect book) must therefore be possible. It hardly needs saying that the author makes his narrator's facile equation between the desirable and the possible an object of parodic censure. The affected quality of the narrator's modesty is further confirmed at the start of his transcribed dialogue. To his friend, he utters fawning, hyperbolic remarks concerning his own age ("bearing all my years on my back" [con todos mis aiios a cuestas] [DQ I: Prologue, 52]), his lack of publications and the presumed shortcomings of his book: "with a story dryas hemp, bereft of invention, paltry in style, poor in conceits and utterly devoid of learning and doctrine" (con una leyenda seca como un esparto, ajena de invenci6n, menguada de estilo, pobre de concetos y falta de toda erudici6n y doctrina) (DQI: Prologue, 52). He therefore seems to be fishing for compliments from a known reader and friend, bound to show sympathy. Moreover, those remarks come on the heels of the narrator's comment about his potential readership as "that ancient lawgiver they call the masses" (el antiguo legislador que llaman vulgo) (DQI: Prologue, 52), implicitly attributing intellectual inferiority to any reader who would fault that narrator for the "defects" cited by the narrator himself. Thus, both his self-deprecation and modesty seem token and insincere. Second, the narrator conveys an equally impossible desire, not only concerning the "book," but specifically the "Prologue": "I should wish only to present it [the history] to you in its purest and barest form, without the frill of a Prologue" (5610 quisiera dartela [la historia] monda y desnuda, sin el ornato de pr6logo) (DQ I:

"This Is Not a Prologue"

125

Prologue, 51; emphasis added). Here the reader faces the paradox of a prologuist who states, in "this" very prologue, that what prologuists state in their prologues is a superfluous "frill" (ornato). The author makes his narrator seem unaware that, owing to its self-reference and self-contained quality, that character's assertion seems true to the degree it is false, useful to the degree that it is superfluous. Moreover, it would seem that the narrator must disbelieve what he claims, in "this prologue," to believe about the futility of composing "this prologue" for "this book." For only thus can he produce, and only thus was he presumably able to produce, "this prologue" that asserts the "important" message concerning its own futility. From his reader's standpoint, the message that would make the narrator's Prologue worth reading would be that the Prologue "you are now reading" is not worth reading. To accept that message as worthwhile is to accept it as worthless, thus worthwhile, and so on. Regarding ethos, such lack of selfawareness argues against the narrator's competence and reliability. The narrator's failure of ethos-his failure to show modesty, competence, and reliability-is thus seen to result specifically from his capitulation to the conventional demands of the captatio benevolentiae: the seemingly contradictory need to tout and denounce one's talents and one's work. 26 His failure stems as well from his related desires to emulate some ineffable archetype of beauty, and to present the bare truth of his "history" -shorn of rhetorical "frills"-together with his inability to recognize those commonplace desires as a practical impossibility. Thus, too, many of his rhetorical failures in the Prologue's first two paragraphs both dramatize and parody what amounts to a prototype of an author's "ethical" dilemma. In particular, however, the narrator's rhetorical failures allude to the specific dilemma of the author responsible for the actual Prologue and bookthe actual fiction-we have before us. In matters relating more directly to pathos, which is nonetheless inseparable from ethos, the narrator's situation reflects that of an author who must elicit trust and sympathy from an unknown readership. Hoping for his readers' acceptance, yet fearing their rejection, an author is prone to affirm or deny their critical acumen according to how they judge both his talents and his work. Addressing an audience of potential friends and enemies, that author will want to show confidence and respect toward the first group, thereby eliciting sympathy, even as he will harbor feelings of hostility or indifference toward the second, convincing himself that their opinions (and their sympathy) are unworthy of his attention. In Cervantes' time, one famous method of dealing with the constant authorial 26. In his Prologhi at 'Don Chisciotte,' Socrate argues that throughout the Prologue of 1605, the author ironically portrays himself as caught between the contrary demands of the exordium and the captatio benevotentiae (1974,88-111).

126

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

dilemma of how to address an audience of potential friends and foes, and how to sift critical wheat from chaff, is found in the two separate prologues of Mateo Aleman's Guzmdn de Alfarache: one addressed as "To the Masses" (Al vulgo), the other "From the Selfsame [Author] to the Discreet Reader" (Del mismo allector discreto) (Aleman [1599, 1602] 1983,91-92,93-94). The unwittingly ambivalent statements of Cervantes' narrator in the Prologue serve to parody both that authorial dilemma and Aleman's authorial method for striking the "correct" posture with the "proper" readership. Faced with an audience of potential sympathizers and critics, the narrator clearly chooses to perceive the first group as "discreet," the second as part of the "masses." He is therefore made to seem incapable, despite his best efforts, of sustaining a tone of cordiality in the words he addresses to the implied reader of the Prologue. Hence his unwitting ambiguity in his various modes of address. As Porqueras Mayo points out, the opening words "idle/leisured reader" (desocupado lector) constitute an unprecedented mode of address in Spain's prefatory tradition (1981, 77). If those words can be understood in a favorable light, they can also be taken to imply the reader's idleness or lack of involvement in his or her reading. Similarly, the narrator's words, "gentle [literally: soft] reader" (lector suave), in the final paragraph of the Prologue may refer to either the implied reader's benevolence or his or her uncritical, soft-headed gullibility. We know not which. In both cases, the narrator's diction resembles the ingenuous laxity of such a statement as "I cannot recommend this candidate [reader] too highly." Furthermore, the narrator addresses the reader as "dearest reader" (lector carisimo) only when stating that the latter need not forgive or conceal the flaws he or she may perceive in the narrator's intellectual "child." But, while seeming respectfully to exonerate and endear his reader, the narrator appears to strike an accusatory, hostile tone: "You are neither its relative nor its friend" (ni eres su pariente ni su amigo) (DQI: Prologue, 51). Indeed, the reader may well take this to suggest that his critical assessment of the book is, in the narrator's opinion, of little import. In addition, the narrator proves ambiguous in his acknowledgment of the reader's inherent dignity and freedom. For if the reader's gift of freedom is acknowledged in theological language, "you have your soul in your body as well as your free will" (tienes tu alma en tu cuerpo y tu libre albedrio) the reader is said to possess those qualities "as much as the most perfectly wrought man" (como el mas pintado) (DQI: Prologue, 51; emphasis added), in idiomatic terms that implicitly equate that reader with such soulless, unfree entities as a literary character or "painted image." Further, the narrator calls the reader "Lord [of your house], as the king is lord of his revenues" (senor della, como el rey de sus alcabalas). And yet the narrator no sooner likens the reader to a

"This Is Not a Prologue"

127

"king" than, in the next clause, he seemingly negates the compliment, again by means of an ambiguous idiom: "[A]nd you know the commonplace saying, that beneath my own cloak I can kill the king." ([Y] sabes 10 que comunmente se dice, que debajo de mi manto, al rey mato) (DQI: Prologue, 51). As Williamson succinctly observes: "The 'king' here refers to the reader who has just been invited by Cervantes to view himself as the sovereign judge of the text" (1984, 82-83). Far from putting the reader at ease, the statement can thus be construed to mean: "Reader/king, beware." Of course, this latter message is also at issue with the apparently respectful meaning of the first paragraph's concluding words, which can likewise be read as potentially dismissive and hostile: "[Y]ou may say of the history whatever you please, without fearing that anyone will slander you for the bad things, or reward you for the good things, which you may say about it" ([P]uedes decir de la historia todo aquello que te pareciere, sin temor que te calunien por el mal ni te premien por el bien que dijeres della) (DQ I: Prologue, 51). Indeed, the narrator's words of praise for his readers can also be understood as conveying his indifference about whether his readers enjoy the work, or about whether anyone reads the book at all. What is more, after the narrator tells his reader that the latter may judge the work with impunity, that reader learns at the start of the dialogue between the narrator and his friend that criticism of either the narrator or his work will equate such a reader with "that ancient lawgiver they call the masses" (el antiguo legislador que llaman vulgo) (DQ I: Prologue, 52). The narrator tries, in other words, to write a Prologue to a person whom he would like to consider the discreet reader (sympathizer), while remaining haunted by the implied presence of the vulgar reader (critic). Caught within the contrary demands of literary convention-and couching several of his "ideas" in the conventional language of popular sayings (reftanes)the narrator seems unable to elicit a fitting emotional response (pathos) of sympathy, confidence, or trust. Thus, if perceived as an utterance of the narrator, the Prologue's captatio benevolentiae represents nothing less than a prototypical failure to establish a proper rhetorical posture. In a sense, of course, it is necessary to view the narrator's failure of rhetorical posture as a measure of the author's success. The narrator's incompetent statements of "authorial" purpose both signal and constitute the implied author's competent parody. Indeed, through the author's combined use of fiction and parody, the narrator's failures and contradictions (matter and substance of the author's parodic fiction) generate that author's rhetorical success. In particular, the mediation of a fictional narrator and a fictional prologue allows the author not only to state the prototypical desire of an author to create a

128

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

perfect book, but also to parody that desire as an impossibility. On this point, the same statement that signifies the narrator's naivete also signifies, from a different perspective, the author's shrewdness and self-knowledge, specifically in his capacity as author of "this" Prologue and "this" book. By implying, through his parody, that no book is perfect, the author seems to acknowledge that his own book is therefore defective. But if it is folly to expect (rather than desire) a perfect book, then failure to produce such a book can hardly be considered a defect that makes the author deserving of censure. As a result, the narrator's apology for being unable to "thwart the laws of Nature" (contravenir al orden de naturaleza) (DQ I: Prologue, 50) not only represents an instance of his affected modesty and, as such, an object of parody. That statement also calls attention, in a way that the narrator seemingly fails to realize, to an immutable state of affairs that requires no apology. Indeed, the narrator's opening statements about his yearnings and his presumed failures call our attention to the mysterious fact that art arises out of a legitimate desire to strive after ideal beauty, which is also a practical impossibility, or a species of wise folly. Both utopian desire and imperfection are shown to lie at the heart of human artifice. Thus, if the author both states and acknowledges through his narrator that his book is less than perfect, he falls short of taking blame for such "imperfection," implying that it is simply "natural." Using a method akin to Mexia's distinction between "telling lies" and "lying," the author issues a statement of "apology" through the narrator, but without therefore apologizing. The author's utterance thus represents a nonapology in the form of an apology. Here, as throughout the rest of the Prologue, the author avoids having to engage in either self-praise or self-censure. As a consequence, he avoids striking a rhetorical posture of either arrogance or affected modesty. A similar strategy is at work in the author's enumeration of what appear to be his personal defects through the voice of the narrator. To be sure, the pseudobiographical data concerning the narrator's age and lack of publications allude to the historical author. Yet it is pertinent to recall that this enumeration of presumed defects forms the substance of the narrator's affected modesty. The author manages to absolve himself of that defect by making it the object of censure, in that the narrator's affected modesty is the author's parody of affected modesty. It is also far from clear that the narrator's advanced age and lack of publications, for instance, are meant to be taken as defects. In any case, the author's utterance conveys no other "truth" through these statements than his own dramatization and parody of the narrator's insincerity. There would seem to be no justification for reading such a parody of the narrator's statements as the author's attempt

"This Is Not a Prologue"

129

either to affirm or deny those statements' self-deprecating content in relation to the author himself. Thus, regarding authorial ethos, the technique of fictional self-parody is again made to yield a paradox. The author is able to issue a series of self-deprecating "statements" that nonetheless fail to make him the object of censure. His selfdeprecating words (logoi) fail to signify an act of self-deprecation. Yet neither do they, of themselves, make him an object of praise. Nor do they constitute an act of self-praise or philautia. Furthermore, as part of the author's utterance, the narrator's statements neither deny nor attempt to conceal the possible deficiencies of the author or the work. Indeed, the affected modesty of his fictional analogue is, paradoxically, the means whereby the author avoids his character's dual folly of both philautia and affected modesty. Also regarding authorial ethos, it is relevant to note that the narrator's defect of affected modesty follows from the convention of having somehow to praise and denounce one's own work. Indeed, within the context of a work that an author has chosen to write and publish, statements of self-censure seem inexorably to lead to affected modesty. Likewise, statements of self-praise invariably betoken arrogance. The author's parody of the narrator's defect, affected modesty, therefore includes and dramatizes the conventional discursive arrangement that brings that defect about. Furthermore, as the author's fictional surrogate, parodically representing the writer responsible for the Prologue we are now reading, the narrator faces the same conventional demands as his creator. So it is through his parody of the narrator's false modesty that the author also parodies the narrator's having accepted the demands of rhetorical convention on their own impossible terms: self-praise or self-censure; arrogance or affected modesty. But the parodic representation of the narrator's acceptance does not so much signal the author's simple rejection of the same terms as his rejection of their apparent fixity. Moreover, as set forth in the narrator's statements, those categorical terms are also the medium whereby the author averts, dramatizes, and moves beyond them-in other words, he moves beyond having to choose either one or the other course of writerly action. In creating a story and a parody about a character who fails to resolve his "ethical" dilemma as "author of this book," the empirical Cervantes, in his capacity as author of Don Quixote, elides that dilemma himself He therefore fulfills the demands of ethos in the act of subverting them, just as he simultaneously upholds and undoes the terms of those demands. The author's parody of his own authorial dilemma dramatizes how he both is and is not bound by those terms (selfpraise/self-censure, arrogance/affected modesty). Fictional self-parody likewise distances him from the contradictoriness of his "ethical" demands as author of

130

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

the book: how to effect self-praise without arrogance; or self-censure without affected modesty. Yet the "resolution" of his dilemma is intelligible only in light of those contradictory demands. It may prove tempting to read the narrator's statements of affected modesty concerning his own shortcomings as an enumeration of the author's possible defects or motives for criticism. fu such, the author's willingness to present them at all, even in the form of fictional parody, would seem to indicate his humility. Nonetheless, the issue of whether these potential defects are either true or false in reference to the author, his Prologue, or his book-or whether those potential defects are truly defects-remains unaddressed, much less answered. The upshot of the author's "ethical" posture is, characteristically, to defer all decisions to the reader about which traits of that author, his Prologue, or his book are finally deserving of praise or censure. Along the same lines, the author reveals self-awareness and competence concerning his particular dilemma as author of "this" Prologue in the highly selfreferential second paragraph, which begins with the narrator's express desire to deliver his story "in its purest and barest form" (monda y desnuda) and to avoid writing a necessarily useless prologue. Thanks to his method of fictional self-parody, the author of the fiction is thus able to suggest a prototypical desire to sidestep literary convention (i.e., to avoid writing prologues); to uphold its legitimacy as a desire; and, last, to acknowledge that desire's impossibility. Again, through parody, the author transforms the narrator's rhetorical failure and lack of self-awareness into his own rhetorical success. Similarly, in an act of self-allusion and self-parody, that same author dramatizes the narrator's dilemma to be an obverse reflection of his own. More important, however, is the Prologue's second paragraph, where the unselfcritical narrator calls attention to himself as "author" of the Prologue, to the futility of all prologues, and to the arduous labor involved in composing "the preface you are now reading." These statements show the author's Prologue, or his prefatory fiction, to be a competent, inventive paradox of self-reference. When perceived as part of the author's utterance, these statements by the narrator reveal that the author chooses to fUlfill his own obligation to write a prologue by writing a fictional parody about (1) the convention that demands that authors write prologues to their books, (2) the conventions governing the writing of prologues, and (3) his writing/not writing, and having to write, this specific, prefatory utterance for his Don Quixote. Yet an example of Cervantes' tendency to reverse reversals, or in a Spanish phrase, rizar el rizo (to curl the curl), his Prologue also represents a parody of its own self-parody. For, as a parody of prologues, the author's Prologue is also a parody of an author who, within the context of his own prologue, would

"This Is Not a Prologue"

131

denounce the value of all prologues and the need to write them. Deftly avoiding the contradictions of his narrator, whose circumstances parallel his own, Cervantes produces a prologue that parodies the theory and practice of prologues. Yet, in doing so, he writes what is generally recognized as a masterful prologue, which also has the effect of a metaprologue and an anti prologue, but is not simply one or the other. 27 Without owning or disowning the desire to avoid writing a prologue, Cervantes writes his prologue, acting on both the assumption and the awareness that it is impossible to avoid writing prologues. Yet a question remains that applies to both the narrator and the author: Do they succeed or fail in their obligation to write a prologue? On the one hand, it seems plausible to assert that the author fulfills his obligation to write a prologue, even as he achieves his purpose (desire?) to write a fully parodic prologue, or a prologue that parodies all prologues. This achievement means that the author both fulfills and avoids his obligation in equal measure. It means, too, that one is justified in construing his antiprologue as a defense of prologues. In fact, regarding the author's obligation, his fulfillment is made coterminous with avoidance. The method he employs in fulfilling the demands of convention remains identical to the method employed in subverting those demands. It therefore remains unclear whether "fulfillment" or "avoidance" of his obligation to write a prologue best describes the purpose behind the author's utterance. In what sense, then, are we to judge the author's prefatory utterance a success or a failure? And in what sense are we to consider this fictional, prefatory utterance the author's prologue to his book? In a manner that parallels the evasive "achievement" of the author, the narrator's means of both fulfilling and skirting the obligation to write his own prologue consists of transcribing, or claiming to transcribe, a conversation with a garrulous friend. According to its own internal "logic," the narrator's utterance originates from his presumed inability to write a prologue and his express desire to avoid writing a prologue. What is more, the prologue that presumably cost the narrator so much work to "compose" or make-"I found no [task] more laborious than that of making the preface you are now reading" (ninguno [i.e., ningun trabajo] tuve por mayor que hacer esta prefaci6n que vas leyendo) (DQI: Prologue, 50-coincides with a prologue that we never see and that the narrator 27. Canavaggio, in "Cervantes en primera persona," rightly observes that the Prologue of 1605 concerns the art and science of writing prologues-that it is, in other words, a meta-prologue (1977, 38). Rivers deems the Prologue of 1605 an "anti-prologue" in "Cervantes' Art of the Prologue" (1974, 169). Alberto Porqueras Mayo uses the term "counterprologue" (contra-pr6Iogo) in reference to the same text, in "En torno a los pr6logos de Cervantes" (1981, 80). Rivers (1960) provides a brief discussion of the prefatory matter in Part II, arguing that Cervantes himself is probably the author of the Letter of Approval that was supposed to be by Marquez Torres, whose name appears at its close (DQ II: Approbation,29-31).

132

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

never "writes." For the "prologue" whose "writing" led him to sit "pensively" at his desk, pen behind his ear, cannot correspond to the prologue that results from his effortlessly transcribing, and perhaps doctoring, a conversation with his friend. Yet he also identifies that "preface" as the one we are "now reading." Indeed, if we assume the narrator's perspective, what we have before us represents neither his "original" transcription nor the "original" Prologue. Yet neither does it represent an "antiprologue." Instead, we encounter the narrator's prelude to a prologue, or even his nonprologue, which bears the name "Prologue." Furthermore, the reader reaches the end of the narrator's prologue only to hear about, not what the narrator did, but what he "tried" and "decided" to do: "From those very [words of my friend] I tried / decided to make this Prologue" (de elIas mismas [i.e., las razones del amigo] quise hacereste pr6Iogo). In the very next clause, the narrator refers to his prologue in the future tense: "in which [prologue] you will see, gentle reader, the sound judgment of my friend" (en el cual vertis, lector suave, la discreci6n de mi amigo) (DQI: Prologue, 58; emphasis added). Hence we are left to await the appearance of the narrator's "real" prologue as the one we are now reading draws to a close. Indeed, the conclusion of the narrator's prologue seems to preface its own beginning, or "birth." More accurately, though, this "conclusion" suggests the possible "beginning" of a nonexistent prologue, "to be seen" (veras) at some moment that remains forever in a state of deferral. Accordingly, for reasons both parallel and opposed, the Prologue of the narrator and that of the author could justifiably bear such paradoxical titles as: "This Is Not a Prologue," "This Prologue Is Not a Prologue," "This Prologue Is Not 'This Prologue,'" "This Prologue Has Not Been 'This Prologue,'" "This Prologue Will Not Have Been This Prologue," or even "This Prologue Will Not Be 'This Prologue."'28 Hence the most elementary questions about authorial ethos-that is, about the author's establishing his credentials as a competent writer of prologuesseem unanswerable in such simple terms as yes or no, true or false. Indeed, we would have to affirm and negate both sides of such questions as the following. Did the author fail or succeed in his obligation to write a prologue? Did he mean to fulfill or avoid his obligation to write a prologue? Does he present the conven28. In Dissemination, Derrida engages in a similar logical or semantic paradox by means of the opening/anti-opening, prefatory/anti prefatory negative assertion of the first chapterlantichapter titled (or translated as) "Outwork" that remains inside/outside of his booklantibook: "This (therefore) will not have been a book" (1981, 3). Similar, yes, but not identical. In Cervantes' text such antinomies remain implicit and draw attention to both opposing sides of a question. As evinced in the apodictic quality of the above quotation, Derrida's writings show a penchant for antinomy, which relies on rigid dichotomies and univocal terms (e.g., "presence/absence"). This penchant remains consistent with a radically skeptical position that seeks and laments the inability to obviate meaning and mind.

"This Is Not a Prologue"

133

tion of writing prologues, as well as his own "prologue," as worthy of praise or censure? Does the author's utterance reveal a serious or comic purpose? Is "this," or is this not, the author's complete Prologue, or does "the preface you are now reading" remain to be written? It would seem that in the end, readers alone must ascertain whether it is folly or wisdom that engenders the obligation to write prologues. With no assistance from the implied author, they must decide for themselves whether the fictional parody of prologues they are "now reading" truly puts forth a prologue and in what sense that parodic prologue proves either a success or a failure. But, more important, the reader alone must decide whether it seems necessary to make such either/or judgments, or to favor one extreme position over the other in aesthetic and rhetorical matters. Indeed, I would suggest that Cervantes' handling of his own, and of the typical author's, "ethical" dilemma is more an invitation to ponder and play with the paradoxes, impossibilia, or sophismata that that dilemma brings forth than to provide "solutions" to a series of logical and semantic "problems." Just as parody and an ambivalent, reflective openness to contrary positions characterize the author's ethos, established in the captatio benevolentiae of the Prologue's first section, so an ambivalent, reflective laughter characterizes his pathos. For that implied author establishes his credentials, or his ethos, through a parody of ethos, and of his own "ethical" dilemma. In similar fashion, it seems especially apt that he should elicit a response of laughter from his readers as he induces them to observe the admixture of wisdom and folly, truth and falsity, or necessity and impossibility involved in reducing the theory and practice of literature to a series of rigid tenets or formulations. Thus, by parodically dramatizing the art and science of literature as a discordia concor~a mysterious reality that ultimately defies ratiocinative logic and finds apt expression only in the nonsensicallanguage of paradox-Cervantes elicits a mixed response of admiratio and laughter. Indeed, this response remains consistent with what Cide Hamete reportedly asserts in reference to the protagonist: "Don Quixote's exploits should be celebrated either with wonder or with laughter" (los sucesos de don Quijote, o se han de celebrar con admiraci6n 0 con risa) (DQ II: 44, 368). Regarding this passage, Williamson observes: "Cervantes himself points out that laughter should not be the sole response to the knight's lunacies. Admiratio, just as much as mirth, forms part of his intention in the Quixote" (1984, 90). Williamson also astutely observes that Cervantes is able to elicit such a novel response from his readers owing to the knight's paradoxical lunacy: "Cervantes effectively redefines the nature of the marvelous by seeking it, not in the supernatural, but in the madness of his protagonist; although the madness is consistently mocked, it is used all the same to turn the tables on the reader, whose common sense is never

134

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

actually confounded but neither is it ever decisively triumphant over the knight's inspired lunacy" (1984,90-91). Elaborating on Williamson's remarks, I would add that in Cervantes' fictionboth its Prologue and subsequent narrative-the discourse of common sense (doxa) is never decisively triumphant over the inspired nonsense of paradoxical discourse. Indeed, Cervantes deploys the rhetoric of paradoxy, and his protagonist's lunacy, not simply to confound, but to enlarge and "open up" the fixity of conventional assumptions about truth, falsity, sanity, or madness. If the lunacy of the protagonist, like the apparent nonsense of paradoxy, leads us to laugh at transparent "folly," the hidden cogency of such lunacy and nonsense provokes admiratio, which aims at shocking us into a critical, self-reflective response. The first section of the Prologue of 1605 invites us to wonder (admiratio) and laugh at the interplay between necessity and impossibility that frames the narrator's failures of rhetoric, logic, and semantics. As a result, we may laughingly marvel in that section of the Prologue at the slyness of the author's corresponding achievements. Thanks to the author's fictional self-parody, we are able, with special awareness, to observe and laugh at a central paradox of artistic creation: the necessary yet impossible desire to produce the most beautiful work imaginable. We also observe and laugh at a central paradox of rhetorical convention: the relative necessity and impossibility, within the context of one's own writings, of touting one's own talents without arrogance, and of decrying them without affected modesty. We are led to admire and laugh at Cervantes' ability seemingly to achieve the impossible, or to "solve" by transforming, these impossibilia. For he reveals his ability to fulfill and avoid his obligation to write a prologue in accord with the demands of convention, together with his ability to create an innovative prologue through a fictional parody of conventional categories. And yet the laughter that Cervantes elicits from us in his Prologue does not allow us to remain complacent, or satisfied with our superiority over the objects of his parody. For the parody is not limited to the writers of books and prologues, but also extends to the paradoxical circumstance of the reading public. Indeed, that parody extends to the paradoxical relations between both the implied author and the prospective reader. In particular, we are doubtless able to laugh, but we laugh uneasily, at the irresolution of the narrator as he tries proffer words of endearment to his addressee, while his impulse toward hostility often gains the upper hand. With respect to his potential, unknown readership, the narrator wavers between hope and obsequiousness on the one hand and fear and insult on the other. He is therefore moved, in the manner of Mateo Aleman, to divide his potential friends and foes into the facile categories of "discreet readers" and "the masses." We can hardly avoid feeling implicated by the narrator's modes of

"This Is Not a Prologue"

135

direct address, or by the statements he aims directly at his prospective readers. We are thus left to ask where the author might stand regarding his narrator's failed overtures of pathos. We remain unsure of the emotional response the author is trying to elicit through his parody, which means that our chief response is a mixture of laughter, uneasiness, and uncertainty. Is the author pandering to our vanity or is he criticizing us? On what grounds would he do one or the other? Rather than choosing one answer or the other, we do well to recall that, in the context of the author's fictional self-parody, the unwitting ambivalence of the narrator's statements implies his creator's conscious ambivalence. The narrator's waverings between contrary impulses, and the implicit parody of those waverings, originate from his acting on the assumption that he must address the reader as either friend or foe and thus defensively as either a "discreet" or "vulgar" reader. In a sense, the reader is both and neither. Furthermore, in exactly what sense, or to what degree the reader is friend or foe, "vulgar" or "discreet," will not only vary in each case, but also vary from one moment to the next. In a manner of speaking, the author uses the binary logic of his narrator to expose two extreme positions and to avoid making a definitive choice between them. Unlike Aleman and the narrator in the Prologue of 1605, the author of Don Quixote seems to respect the uncertainty attaching to the response of a prospective readership. Through the parody of his narrator, the author reveals an openness to the possibility of confidence in his unknown readership, but without affecting naive optimism. He is therefore able to show an attitude of skeptical caution, but without giving offense. More to the point, the author's parody dramatizes the internal conflict of every author who must address an unknown readership, and it dramatizes, too, the relation between implied author and prospective reader as an unfolding coincidentia oppositorum. Without affirming or denying either possibility, the author, Cervantes, deploys his narrator's statements of failed pathos in order to address a potential friend or foe, a potential member of either the discriminating elite or the "vulgar" masses. He addresses prospective readers, whose actuality is permeated with the possibility of their continually showing varying degrees of friendliness or competence. Appropriately enough, the author's parody raises the possibility of the reader's friendliness or competence, which yet remains an open question. And no less open are the very criteria by which one numbers some readers among the "vulgar" and others among the "discreet." Moreover, it is discernible from the parody that the author, unlike his narrator, resists yoking the concept of the reader's friendliness to that reader's competence. In this ambivalent, fluctuating light, we may judge the message that the author conveys about his readership, through a parody of his narrator's statements and tactics. For the author's Prologue dramatizes and parodies the circumstance of the

136

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

reader no less effectively than it does the circumstance of the author himself The reader, like the author, must also establish his or her credentials. It is doubtless true, as the narrator claims, that readers need not fear or expect to receive either praise or blame for how they judge the work: "without fearing that anyone will slander you for the bad things, or reward you for the good things, which you may say about it" (sin temor que te calunien por el mal ni te premien por el bien que dijeres della) (DQ I: Prologue, 51). Yet this rather limited exemption from "fear" does not mean that the manner in which one reads either the story or the Prologue remains devoid of consequences, or even certain perils. Again, if we regard the narrator's unwitting ambivalence as the conscious ambivalence of the author, it seems that the latter portrays the circumstance of the reader as a paradoxical blend of "free will" (libre albedrfo) and constraint ("as the best-wrought person" [como el mas pintado]) with respect to both the author and the text. As set forth in the author's fictional Prologue, author, reader, and text are involved in a paradoxical relation of mutual antagonism, dependence, and cooperation. In fact, concerning the text, the reader appears both enthroned and dethroned, both allowed and made to share in the author's presumed "sovereignty," which is therefore far from absolute in either case. As a person, citizen, and child of God, "with your soul in your body" (con tu alma en tu cuerpo), or what have you, the reader is dutifully acknowledged as lord and king over his actions and his estate: "you are in your house, where you are lord, as the king is lord of his revenues" (estas en tu casa, donde eres senor della, como el rey de sus alcabalas). And yet, "kingly" readers, specifically in their capacity as readers of this text, may encounter the equivalent of grave danger, since "beneath my own cloak, I can kill the king" (debajo de mi manto, al rey mato) (DQ I: Prologue, 51). Each reader's personal method of reading and judging will reflect on that reader for good or ill. Each reader is therefore responsible for his or her own exercise of "free will" In fact, readers may find themselves already inscribed in the text as targets of what is, beginning with the Prologue, the author's elaborate parody of how literature is both written and read. Thus readers may find themselves, at some point in either the Prologue or the story, laughing at their own assumptions and habits as readers. Depending on their involvement with the work-and depending on how they employ their leisure-readers will invest the ambivalent address "idle/leisured reader," in each case, with a specific, active meaning, thereby inscribing themselves into the text in a particular fashion. Similarly, we may read the openness and ambivalence contained in the words "dearest reader" and "gentle reader" as neither a gratuitous compliment nor a veiled insult from the author, but as another unanswered question. Implicitly, these modes of address pose open ques-

"This Is Not a Prologue"

137

tions that challenge readers truly to make sense of the text in a personal manner. Simply put, the author compels the reader to determine in what sense(s) the latter will be "idlelleisured," "dear," or "gentle." Yet in none of those senses does the status or competence of readers depend on their making Cervantes' text an object of praise or censure. For unlike his narrator, Cervantes does not seem to seek uncritical adulation, which would just as likely secure our membership in the "ancient lawgiver, the masses," as our denouncing work for unsound reasons. Beginning with the ambiguity and ambivalence informing his narrator's statements and modes of address, the author leads his readers to recognize that, now and hereafter, they will be continually revealing and reading themselves according to how they invest ambiguities, ambivalences, and paradoxes in the text with meaning; according to what they choose to praise or censure in the work; and their reasons for doing so. Beginning with the Prologue that "we are now reading," each act (and moment) of reading becomes integral to the self-conscious text, which serves as a fictional mirror of its own writing (encoding) and reading (decoding), in turn another form of "authoring" or encoding. The fiction (of both the Prologue and "the book") therefore presents a blend of potentiality and actuality. Though already written, its meaning depends on how it is read, which will differ in each case, with each reader, from one moment to the next. If the prospective reader will invest the text with a particular meaning-similar to, yet different from, other readings of the same work-the jointly open and constraining text will also give meaning to that reader's activity. We are led, then, not only to contemplate the paradoxes of reading and writing in general, but also to focus on the "uniqueness" of "this," our reading, of "this" Prologue and also "this" book, for which each of us shares responsibility with the author as co-creator and co-sovereign. Regardless of whether we receive reward or calumny for how we negotiate the apparent contradictions, or impossibilia and sophismata, inherent in the text, we shall continually earn or forfeit our credentials as either "discreet" or "vulgar" readers, in some, still open, sense of those terms. Cervantes' ambivalent, open method for addressing potentially competent or incompetent readers thus underscores the failure of pathos besetting the prefatory rhetoric of Mateo Aleman, which "inspires" the rhetorical "method" of Cervantes' narrator. In the end, Aleman's prefatory utterance, like that of the fictional narrator, fails to produce any meaningful effect on its audience. First, as Cervantes' prefatory parody throws into relief, a rhetorical method like the one found in Aleman's prologues simply equates "vulgarity" and "discretion" with friendly or hostile reception of the writer and his work. Such an equation renders both categories virtually meaningless as designations of readerly competence. Second, few readers can be expected to volunteer for membership in the "vulgar"

138

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

sect. We readers all know ourselves to be "discreet," thank you very much. The narrator's hostile remarks, like Aleman's invective, thus fallon deaf ears, at the same time that his laudatory statements and expressions of modesty are made to seem msmcere. By contrast, Cervantes' parodic utterance manages to pose a challenge to those who would either accept or reject his work. The challenge is latent in the author's parody of the self-serving impetus of both Aleman and the narrator to set up a logical mechanism, based on dichotomous categories, whereby every potential reader receives automatic designation as either "vulgar" or "discreet." As is his custom, Cervantes opens rather than rejects these categories. From the Prologue's first, ambivalent words, "idle/leisured reader," each reader is very much involved in the challenge of investing the textual ambiguities with intelligibility, identifYing the narrative voice, sorting out wisdom from folly, truth from falsity, and deciding what is meant in jest or in earnest (as burlas or veras), or both. Readers may choose to reject the author and his work. Or perhaps those readers may choose, at some moment, to forego reading the rest of the Prologue and the narrative. In either case, these hypothetical readers can hardly fail to realize that they are rejecting a challenge and hence showing themselves either unwilling or unable to undertake the hermeneutic task that the text sets before them. Such readers can hardly avoid doubting that by shunting the work aside, they are proving themselves unequal to their role as that work's co-sovereigns and co-creators. Moreover, failure to realize such a challenge, or to feel such a doubt, would only argue more effectively against their "discretion" as readers. In addition, as an instance of Cervantes' dramatic irony, the narrator's seemingly perfunctory remarks about his "reader's" freedom and lack of obligation to praise, or even read, the text increase rather than mitigate Cervantes' reader's sense of challenge and responsibility. Yet the Prologue proves no less challenging, or threatening, to readers who choose to persevere in their reading. On the one hand, as a result of the Prologue's paradoxes that invite and prevent resolution, accepting the challenge to involve themselves with the text will inexorably lead readers to consider themselves accomplices (friends) of the author. From their perspective, they form the ranks of those readers who understand the author's ironies and the subtlety of his clues. It is in this regard that Cervantes elicits a pathos akin to sympathy. Indeed, we may well come to believe, at least at first, that we are able to grasp what the author says, parodies, and dramatizes about the relation between art and nature; about the analogy between artistic creation and natural conception, gestation, and birth; about the theory and practice of writing prologues and narratives; or even about the art and science of establishing a proper rhetorical pos-

"This Is Not a Prologue"

139

ture (ethos and pathos) between author and audience. To the degree that we think ourselves accomplices of the author, we shall believe, further, that we are able to discern what is being praised or censured, and what the author intends in jest or earnest. On the other hand, because of the openness of the text, and the absence of an authoritative voice in either the Prologue or the narrative, we are unable to number ourselves definitively among the elect on the basis of how we interpret Cervantes' work. Accordingly, for each reader, Cervantes in his capacity as author of Don Quixote remains an author implied by the text and invented by the reader. The open structure of the Prologue, emblematic of the entire fiction, all but requires us as readers to acknowledge that the meaning of the utterance we are now reading as well as the implicit authorial position are in large part our own responsibility. The parodic text implicitly requires us to acknowledge, in other words, that we are therein reading a reflection of ourselves in our capacity as negotiators of contradictory statements and circumstances. But we receive no assurance that our judgments are "correct," and no assurance that we are able to avoid inscribing ourselves as objects of parody within the text. The ambiguities and paradoxes that open the text therefore constrain us to construct through our reading a fluid allegory of our own acts of reading, urging us continually to reassess what constitutes a critical or "discreet" understanding of the text. For such an "understanding," the text and implied author provide no explicit mechanism, no technique, and no rules, except those of generallinguistic competence and, especially, those that readers must continually improvise and invent for themselves. Hence there is nothing automatic or permanent about one's membership among the readerly elite. Indeed, what emerges from the Prologue is that critical involvement with the text, rather than some set of fixed norms, or gratuitous praise or censure of the work, remains the chief criterion for readerly "discretion." Furthermore, involvement with the Prologue itself calls attention to our remaining very much alone with the text, in the loneliness of our "souls within our bodies," and thus engaged in a process of textual examination and self-examination. At every step in the Prologue, we may hear the echo of our own laughter, and that of the implied author whom we partially or wholly invent, as we confront now one, now another, image of ourselves as readers-an image both like and different from our abiding, yet evolving, selves. Cervantes' text dramatizes how, starting with the Prologue, the complementary and contrary activities of reader and author become (con) fused. In particular, his text dramatizes how reader and author jointly "beget" the fiction of each other and their shared, textual circumstance mingling rivalry with collaboration, and solitude with communion.

140

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

Bookish Buffoonery: The ''Amusing and Well-Informed Friend" (EI amigo gracioso y bien entendido) If, in the opening and closing sections of the Prologue, the narrator's discourse represents a caricature of the generic "author" and "historian," that simulated discourse also represents a self-parody by the empirical author. Likewise, if the friend's discourse in the second, middle section of the Prologue represents a parodic caricature of the generic "reader" and "critic," it also implicates the actual reader or critic of the author's text. The embedded dialogue in this middle section purports to be a transcribed "conversation" between the self-proclaimed "author" of the "book" and one of his first readers, though we are unsure how much of the "history" this friend actually read. Yet, more important, the dialogue also represents the overlap between the roles of reader and author. First, like other "authors" offered in the narrative, the narrator of the Prologue represents, before all else, a reader of "sources" and previous versions of Don Quixote's "history." Second, for his part, the friend represents both a reader and critic who attempts to exercise nothing short of authorial control over the content, form, and purpose of his interlocutor's narrative. At the start of the dialogue, the narrator overstates his own personal shortcomings and tells his friend of six technical defects that presumably render the work "utterly devoid of learning and doctrine" (falta de toda erudici6n y doctrina) (DQ I: Prologue, 52). These defects, the narrator claims, dispose him toward keeping the history of Don Quixote buried in the archives of La Mancha. What is more, those defects coincide with important, laudatory features to be found in other contemporary works. These features are 1. "marginal citations" (acotaciones en las margenes) (DQI: Prologue, 52); 2. "explanatory annotations at the end of the book" (anotaciones en el fin dellibro) (DQ I: Prologue, 52); 3. sententious maxims "from the whole horde of philosophers, which strike awe [admiratio] in the reader and which make their authors seem men of wide reading, learning and eloquence" ([sentencias] de toda la caterva de fil6sofos, que admiran a los leyentes y tienen a sus auto res por hombres leidos, eruditos yelocuentes) (DQI: Prologue, 52); 4. pious sermonizing, or "little Christian sermons" (sermoncico[s] cristiano[s]) and quotations from Sacred Scripture (''And when they quote Sacred Scripture!") (jPues que cuando citan la Divina Escritura!) (DQI: Prologue, 52);

"This Is Not a Prologue"

141

5. a list ofclassical authorities "beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon and Zoilus or Zeuxis" (comenzando en Arist6teles y acabando en Xenofonte y en Zoilo 0 Zeuxis) (DQ I: Prologue, 53); 6. prefatory "sonnets whose authors are dukes, marquises, counts, bishops, ladies or poets of great renown" (sonetos cuyos autores sean duques, marqueses, condes, obispos, damas 0 poetas celeberrimos) (DQI: Prologue, 52). In sum, doctrinal and learned references ought to appear, according to the narrator, in three places within the text: in the prefatory pages, at the end of the narrative, and in the margins of the "history. "Furthermore, the content of such references ought to include edifying religious and philosophical maxims and ought to derive from Sacred Scripture, classical authorities, or writers of historical or literary renown. Once again, in enumerating his book's presumed defects, the narrator uses diction fraught with ambiguity and contradiction. In attempting to express praise, he betrays his suppressed hostility toward the works of his contemporaries. In particular, the narrator observes that the seemingly praiseworthy features of marginal notes, explanatory annotations, and philosophical maxims form part of "other books," even though these latter "are fabulous and profane" (sean fabulosos y profanos) (DQ I: Prologue, 52). Those adjectives, possibly disparaging in themselves, also suggest those books' lack of decorum. The narrator overstates, and thus seems unwittingly to undermine, his praise for authors of profane and fictional works who quote from Scripture: "People will surely say that they are a bunch of Saint Thomases and other doctors of the Church" (No dirin sino que son unos santos Tomases y otros doctores de la Iglesia). Less than fitting praise, it would seem, for either a secular historian or an artist. These authors' quotations from sacred writings also reveal what is oxymoronically described as their inventive or imaginative (i.e., their disregard of) decorum: "maintaining in all this such ingenious decorum" (guardando en esto un decoro tan ingenioso") (DQI: Prologue, 52; emphasis added). The narrator praises a kindred type of indecorous decorum in reference to their sermonizing: "in one line of print they have portrayed an abstracted lover and in the next they give a little Christian sermon" (en un rengl6n han pintado un enamorado destraido y en otro hacen un sermoncico cristiano). Indeed, if the narrator "intends" the diminutive "little sermon" (sermoncico) to convey a sense of endearment and praise"a delight to hear and read" (que es un regalo oille y leelle) (DQ I: Prologue, 52)-the reader can scarcely disregard that lexeme's disparaging overtones. The narrator further implies that the same aesthetic rationale informs the citation of

142

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

authorities in contemporary books, beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon and Zoilus or Zeuxis, "though the first [of these last two1 was a scandalmonger and the second a painter" (aunque fue maldiciente el uno y pintor el otro) (DQ I: Prologue, 53). This assertion likewise prevents the reader from deeming, or fully believing that the narrator deems, such citation either praiseworthy or necessary. At this stage of the Prologue, however, it is important to remember that the enumeration of our narrator's technical problems constitutes the fictional utterance of a historical author. In his narrator, Cervantes invents a character who, trapped by the categories of conventional wisdom, is made to issue foolish praise of what we can readily identify as literary folly. Here, as elsewhere, the fictional narrator's seemingly careless diction-unwittingly censuring what it praisesfollows from a hidden or implied author's contrivance and artistic design. Specifically, we may read the narrator's incompetent praise for the "scholarly" apparatus in "other books" as an uncharacteristically straightforward satire by Cervantes of the sophomoric pedantry found in the prefaces, endnotes, and marginal citations of many contemporary works. As scholars have generally recognized, Cervantes' mordant satire is aimed chiefly, though not exclusively, at Spain's most famous playwright of the period: Lope de Vega.29 The author of Don Quixote elaborates on his satire of the same literary practices, albeit from a contrary perspective, in what is made simultaneously to appear as the friend's "advice" and the latter's dialectical refutation of the narrator's remarks. But before we examine the "substance" of the friend's counsels, it is important to note that the latter is portrayed, through the voice of the narrator, in a parodic fashion. From the narrator's ingenuous perspective, the dubbing of his friend as "amusing and well-informed" (gracioso y bien entendido) (DQ I: Prologue, 52) is doubtless meant as a flattering description. Yet our justifiable assumption that a subtler "writer" than the narrator is ultimately responsible for the latter's ambiguous remarks most likely leads us not only to detect a possible irony in the words "well informed" (bien entendido), but also to ponder the appropriateness of the seemingly irrelevant adjective amusing ("gracioso"). Surely, this represents an unusual designation, which links traits of cynicism and undue levity with one who is said to be, and who implicitly claims to be, versed in the serious disciplines of rhetoric and poetics. It also calls to mind a stock character of the Spanish theater: the gracioso, bobo, buf6n donaire, or loco--the clown, booby, buffoon, jester, or fool. 29. AB Close bluntly states: "[Tlhe way in which he [Cetvantesllashes out at literary rivals" makes the "brilliantly stylish and witty" Prologue of 1605 "the bitchiest piece that Cervantes ever wrote" (1993,40).

"This Is Not a Prologue"

143

Indeed, the two adjectives used to describe the narrator's friend can be read as the implied author's ironic or parodic means of calling our attention to two elements of that friend's advice. The counsels that the friend sets forth as a "wellinformed" consultant are hardly the shrewd, learned comments that both characters take them to be. Rather, the reader recognizes that in this caricature the "theory" or aesthetic "philosophy" informing those counsels emanates from an uncritical understanding of conventional opinion. Furthermore, the practical element in the friend's advice shows him to be a rather typical "booby." Indeed, the revisions he suggests for improving the "history" seem both frivolous and dishonest. They emerge, I believe, as an object of ridicule and as a sign of that friend's middling intellect. Adding to the portrait of the friend as part buffoon, the text relates that friend's overstated reaction to the narrator's enumeration of the latter's technical difficulties: ''After hearing this, my friend slapped his forehead and burst out laughing, and told me . . . " (Oyendo 10 cual mi amigo, dandose una palmada en la frente y disparando en una carga de risa, me dijo . . .)

(DQI: Prologue, 53). As quoted by the narrator, the friend's first words likewise reveal a combination of arrogance, pedantry, and hackneyed thinking: Good Lord, brother, I have now come to be undeceived of a deception in which I have believed all these many years I have known you, according to which I have always judged you to be discreet and prudent in all your actions. But I now see that you are as far from that as the heavens from the earth. (Por Dios, hermano, que agora me acabo de desengafiar de un engafio en que he estado todo el mucho tiempo que ha que os conozco, en el cual siempre os he tenido por discreto y prudente en todas vuestras aciones. Pero agora veo que estais tan lejos de serlo como 10 esta el cielo de la tierra.) (DQ I: Prologue, 53) Providing another early sign of his arrogance, frivolity, and fustian discourse, the friend considers the problem of investing the "history" with erudition of so little moment that he promises the narrator the following: "So pay close attention to me and you will see that in the blink of an eye, I shall remove all your difficulties and mend the flaws that you say are making you indecisive and fearful" (Pues estadme atento y vereis como en un abrir y cerrar de ojos confundo todas vuestras dificultades y remedio todas las faltas que deds que os suspenden yacobardan) (DQI: Prologue, 54).

144

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

Regarding additions that the narrator should make to the "history" in order to remedy its lack of erudition, the friend's advice is fourfold. His first counsel concerns "the sonnets, epigrams or verses of praise that you are lacking at the beginning" (los sonetos, epigramas 0 elogios que os faltan para el principio). According to the friend, the narrator should write those prefatory verses himself and attribute them to such legendary characters as "Prester John of the Indies" or the "emperor of Trebizond." Should some pedant wish to point out this blatant falsification, the narrator need not worry, since "even if they discover the lie, they are not about to cut off the hand with which you wrote it" (ya que os averigiien la mentira, no os han de cortar la mano con que 10 escribistes) (DQ I:

Prologue, 54). Next, the friend addresses the issue of the narrator's having to "cite in the margins the books and authors from which you drew sentences and sayings that you put into your history" (citar en las margenes los libros y autores de donde sacarades las sentencias y dichos que pusieredes en vuestra historia) (DQ I: Prologue, 54). The friend assures the narrator that "they may even take you for a grammarian [i.e., scholar]" (os tendrin siquiera por gramatico), provided that narrator checkers his work with pithy Latin sayings, to be drawn from Scripture and classical authorities. Obligingly, in the examples he cites, the "well-informed" friend displays his deficient scholarship by attributing to Cato a well-known maxim of Ovid (DQI: Prologue, 55). The friend recommends a similar approach to the narrator's obligation to write "annotations at the end of the book" (DQ I: Prologue, 55). The narrator should seize virtually any name, story, or circumstance in his narrative as an opportunity to refer to Scripture, classical authors, or the work of a respected contemporary. One benefit that the narrator will derive from heeding this advice is that of proving himself "a man learned in humane letters and a cosmographer" (hombre erudito en letras humanas y cosm6grafo" (DQ I: Prologue, 56). It is also in the context of the friend's counsel about notes at the book's close that the author satirizes both the credibility and propriety of the populist prelate, Antonio de Guevara: "[I]f [you should deal with] harlots, you may call upon the bishop of Mondofiedo, who will lend you Lamia, Laida and Flora, the citing of whom will bring you great credit" ([S]i [tratirades] de mujeres rameras, ahi esti el obispo de Mondofiedo, que os prestard a Lamia, Laida y Flora, cuya anotaci6n os dard gran credito) (DQI: Prologue, 56; emphasis added). Before giving his final bit of practical advice about what to add to the text, the friend makes a startling suggestion, offering his services as critical editor of the narrator's "history": "In sum, all you need is to make every effort to name those names, or to touch on those histories in your own, as I have told you here, and leave to me the task of writing the notes

"This Is Not a Prologue"

145

and marginal citations." (En resoluci6n no hay mas sino que vos procureis nombrar estos nombres,

0

tocar estas historias en la vuestra, que aqui he dicho, y

dejadme a mi el cargo de poner las anotaciones y acotaciones) (DQ I: Prologue, 57; emphasis added). Indeed, it would seem that, thanks to the pseudoauthor's or the narrator's "well-informed friend," not even those who prepare critical editions of Don Quixote can avoid inscribing themselves into Cervantes' parodic text. In a manner of speaking, the words of the friend here allow the fictional narrative to encompass, and parody, both its "actual" and "possible" marginalia. Concluding his practical, fourfold advice about what the narrator should append to his narrative, the friend states: "Let us now turn to the citing of authors that other books contain and that yours is lacking." (Vengamos ahora a la citaci6n de los auto res que los otros libros tienen, que en el vuestro faltan). To remedy this presumed defect, the friend encourages the narrator to engage in outright plagiarism: "[Llook for a book that lists them all, from A to Z, as you say. You will then put the same ABCs in your book" ([Bluscar un libro que los acote todos, desde la A hasta la Z, como vos deck Pues ese mismo abecedario pondreis vos en vuestro libro). Again, such a practice cannot but redound to the narrator's benefit: "[Alt the least, that long catalog of authors will lend the book instant authority" ([Plor 10 menos serviri aquellargo catalogo de auto res a dar de improviso autoridad al libro) (DQI: Prologue, 57). It seems untenable to read the friend's fourfold advice as anything other than a straightforward, unambiguous satire aimed at the common literary practices of Cervantes' contemporaries. But here, too, I believe that the intended satire and irony belong to the author rather than the character, portrayed as a half-educated pedant. The friend is humorous and comical, but not witry. It is the author who, after the fashion of a classical eiron, feigns ignorance behind the "mask" of his character. In part, then, it seems fitting that the author should have the friend finally dismiss as irrelevant all his own counsels about textual revisions, which occupy most of the textual space in the Prologue: "[Tlhis book of yours needs none of those things that you say it lacks' ([Elste vuestro libro no tiene necesidad de ninguna cosa de aquellas que vos decis que Ie faita) (DQ I: Prologue, 57; emphasis added). The bulk of the narrator's "Prologue" therefore becomes a transcription of counsels by a consultant whose final counsel about what to affix to the narrator's book is to disregard all those previous counsels. In addition, as yet another instance of dramatic irony, the friend is made to seem unaware that the literary practices he endorses before this piece of advice are not simply unnecessary, but also unhelpful, in the particular case of the narrator-editor's "history." In fact, such practices are themselves defects, which yield the opposite of their desired effect. Through the friend's advice, the author dra-

146

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

matizes how pedantic annotations and references do nothing to enlighten the reader. Instead, they reveal their author's lack of learning and detract from the "authority" of that author's work. What is more, a pedant such as the friend-or, perhaps, such as Lope de Vega-is shown to confuse learning with the appearance of learning. Further, only the most gullible reader would believe that a book's prefatory sonnets, often written plainly in the style of the book's author, represent the handiwork of the illustrious persons whose names they bear. Such a practice does little more to enhance one's credibility than it would, for example, to attribute those sonnets to the "emperor of Trebizond." Appropriately enough, it seems that the author has his narrator heed this bit of advice from the friend, thus failing to heed the friend's later advice to ignore it. Likewise, far from making it "a delight to hear and read," grafting a "little Christian sermon" or a philosophical maxim on to a narrative makes their "doctrine" all the more unpalatable. The chief object of the author's satire here is therefore neither "erudition" nor "doctrine," but pedantry and preachment. For, in contradiction to the now discredited view of Cervantes as an "untutored wit" (ingenio lego), his text suffers from no lack of "erudition," drawn from classical, biblical and contemporary sources of fictional and nonfictional kinds. Furthermore, as occurs in this section of the Prologue, the author's textual references in the narrative often take explicitly parodic form. His subsequent allusions to both learned and popular sources, however, are deftly woven into the narrative proper, without their taking the form of an appendage at the beginning, at the end, or in the margins of the work. The covert quality of such allusions renders them effective, parodies what one may call the "vulgar" equation between erudition and bombast, and defers the work of discovery and judgment to the potentially discerning reader. Although the author of the fiction never resorts to heavy-handed preaching in either the Prologue or the narrative, I would suggest that his work shows no aversion to "doctrine," and even contains what the friend disparagingly calls an admixture of "the human with the divine" (10 humano con 10 divino). Indeed, it hardly seems coincidental that the friend himself should mingle the human with the divine when he decries such an admixture in secular works as "a species of admixture in which no Christian mind should clothe itself" (un genero de mezcla de quien no se ha de vestir ningun cristiano entendimiento) (DQ I: Prologue, 57; emphasis added). In other words, the friend seems unaware of the practical contradiction, or antinomy, involved in claiming that this "admixture" vitiates the secular quality of such works by making them un-Christian. The rest of the friend's counsels in the second section of the Prologue, which come after his counsel to add no marginalia to the narrator's "history," do not therefore concern specific textual additions. Rather, they bear on more general

"This Is Not a Prologue"

147

questions of authorial purpose and literary principle. Indeed, as the friend concludes-and finally dismisses-his fourfold advice about textual revisions, the author, in essence, concludes the straightforward satire aimed at his contemporaries. Thereafter, the author uses the commonplaces and antinomies of the friend's discourse to draw our attention, once again, to his ambivalent authorial posture as well as to the paradoxical quality of his rhetorical and literary endeavor. Rather than being a spokesman for the author, the friend remains very much in character as he delivers his final counsels. What is more, he speaks as though his counsels should guide the narrator in the latter's writing of the "history." In other words, those counsels are relevant only if the "history," which the narrator has already stated is ready for publication, has yet to be written. It would seem that, apposite or no, the friend is unable to resist displaying his "erudition," in the form of "well-informed" advice. Similarly, the narrator seems prepared to accept almost any bit of advice, provided that advice is sufficiently conventional, and provided he can use it to write his "Prologue." The narrator nowhere suggests that his friend's advice is untimely. By representing a near prototype of pedantic discourse and reductive, dichotomous thinking, the narrator's "well-informed friend" clearly perceives both the purpose and genre of the narrator-editor's "history" in the narrowest terms: "[ T] he whole of it is an invective against the books of chivalry" (" [T] odo il es una invectiva contra los libros de cabalferiaS'). In equally reductive fashion, he all but restates the same idea, though adding a social dimension to the "history's" purpose, which would please even the most traditionally minded defenders of public morals: "this written work of yours aims at nothing more than undoing the authority and sway that books of chivalry hold in the world and among the masses" ("esta vuestra escritura no mira a mds que a deshacer la autoridad y cabida que en el mundo y en el vulgo tienen los libros de caballerfas") (DQ I: Prologue, 57; emphasis added). No less reductively, the friend's final recommendations state the same purpose for a third time, and implicitly criticize chivalric romances on aesthetic, as against social or moral, grounds: "Indeed, keep your aim fixed on demolishing the illfounded construction of those knight books" (En efecto, lfevad fa mira puesta a derribar fa mdquina malfondada destos caballerescos libros) (DQI: Prologue, 58; emphasis added). In the friend's opinion, such a straightforward purpose doubtless requires a straightforward method. Clearly unafraid of preaching, he recommends just such a method in an altogether conventional manner: "You need only have recourse to imitation in whatever you write; for the more perfect it [imitation] is, the better your writing will be" (" Solo tiene que aprovecharse de fa imitacion en 10 que

148

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

fuere escribiendo; que cuanto ella fuere mds perfecta, tanto mejor sera 10 que se escribiere") (DQI: Prologue, 57; emphasis added). Like the narrator, the friend remains happily unaware of the contradictions involved in his aesthetic "philosophy." For instance, the "history" constitutes nothing butan "invective" against the romances of chivalry only if its protagonist remains nothing but a crazed hidalgo, whose lunacy consists of imagining himself a knight-errant. Yet without a trace of irony or "invective" on the part of the friend, that character also refers approvingly to both the protagonist and his fantastic profession. In his customarily overstated and commonplace way, the "wellinformed" friend calls Don Quixote "light and mirror of all knight-errantry" (luz y espejo de toda la caballerfa andante) (DQ I: Prologue, 54; emphasis added). Indeed, both the narrator and his friend implicitly link the invective elements of the "history" with the reading of chivalric romances, which led an hidalgo to consider himself a knight. On this view, those romances caused at least one man to lose his wits and to commit a serious breach of social decorum. Yet neither the narrator nor his friend seems to find anything fanciful, or even anachronistic, about the profession of knight-errantry or the existence of knights-errant. Rather, the two characters of the Prologue remain consistent in their comments about "Don Quixote"-though not about the hidalgo-as a "noble knight." The form of "imitation" that the friend implies seems to be superficial, perfectly aligned with his perception of the narrator's "history" and "invective." No doubt the friend bases his specific conception of "perfect imitation" on both an Aristotelian "imitation of nature" and a Ciceronian "imitation of models." But for the friend to believe that a work of history could be such a "perfect" imitation requires him to assume that historical discourse, and thus historical writing, are capable of revealing the "truth" of events ("nature") in a transparent manner. It requires, as well, that at least some of the historian's sources or "models" prove reliable and likewise transparent in their discourse. Hence, they are worthy of being transcribed, in much the same way that the narrator-historian claims to have transcribed the conversation between himself and his friend in order to produce "this" Prologue. Adopting that line of reasoning, it would certainly follow that, to the degree it is a perfectly imitative history, the narrator's work will prove a truly exemplary invective. For in presenting the particular, factual "truth" about what happened to an hidalgo who read chivalric romances, that work will set forth a negative "model," which readers will feel moved to avoid in their own behavior. In short, the overstated phrase "perfect imitation" denotes a faith in the transparency of language, the objectivity of history, and the reliability of sources that one can hardly ascribe to the author of Don Quixote. As discussed earlier, what

"This Is Not a Prologue"

149

the content and form of both the Prologue and the narrative call to our attention is that "nature" or "experience" reach us as "knowledge" through conventional models and conventional categories of imitation, particularly through that form of linguistic imitation we call discourse. Yet there is a character in the subsequent narrative who seems to share the friend's view of what history, as "perfect imitation," both can and should be. Indeed, a character to be discussed more fully in the following chapter of the present study whom the "history" identifies only as "second author" at the close of I, 8 shows a similar penchant for hyperbole and pedantic preaching. Further, this "second author" clearly assumes that one can transparently reveal "truth" (perfectly imitate the facts) through discourse; discover utterly reliable sources; and thereby fulfill the exemplary purpose of historical writing. Hence his assertion that historians should guard against all emotional bias, lest they "stray from the path of truth, whose mother is history, portrait of the times, repository of deeds, witness to the past, example and warning in the present, and portent of the future" (torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, emula del tiempo, dep6sito de las acciones, testigo de 10 pasado, ejemplo y aviso de 10 presente, advertencia de 10 porvenir) (DQI: 9, 144-45). It hardly seems a coincidence that as part of the author's fiction, this "second author," a consistent admirer of the protagonist as a "good knight" (buen caballero) (DQ I: 9, 145), should himself prove a negative exemplum of emotional bias. In addition, the friend's idea of "invective" makes no room for a parody such as that of the author, which is not devoted simply to "demolishing" (derrumbar) but to enlarging its model. And while the "chivalric romances" remain a chief object, they are hardly the sole object, of the author's complex parody or mock encomium of literary discourse. Furthermore, although the friend is never shown to confuse historical with poetic models, it is worth noting here that his simplistic understanding of imitatio, in both the Aristotelian and Ciceronian sense, resembles that of the protagonist. This similarity comes to the fore especially in I, 26, where Don Quixote finally decides, after some vacillation, to shape his penance in Sierra Morena as perfectly as possible after what he considers the historical model of Amadis: "[A]nd let [Amadis] be imitated by Don Quixote in every way possible' ([S]ea 30. Riley rightly notes that a particular understanding of the Renaissance doctrine of imitatio provides the direct inspiration for the protagonist's mock penance: "It is Don Quixote who states the precept of the imitation of models in 1. 25.. . . His [Don Quixote's] efforts might not have been very significant in relation to artistic imitation if Cervantes had not made him consciously aware of the doctrine. But Cervantes does, and the Knight recalls it with direct reference to his intended penance" (1962,64). Riley also observes that the protagonist not only vacillates over whether to imitate the literary models of Amadfs or Orlando, but also that the protagonist's "new exploit could very plausibly have been suggested to him by the real example of Cardenio (life)" (1962, 64). Similarly; Hampton argues that it is the fren-

150

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

imitado [Amadisl de don Quijote de la Mancha en todo 10 que pudiere) (DQ I: 26, 319; emphasis added).30 Indeed, it would prove difficult to find a greater champion of "perfect imitation" than the protagonist himself And it would prove even more difficult, not to say impossible, to divorce the features of Don Quixote's perfectly imitative method, as portrayed in the narrative, from his lunacy. Through the protagonist, the "second author," and the friend, the author demonstrates that narrowness of mind, and in extreme cases even lunatic fanaticism, go hand in hand with the conviction that discourse and art can perfectly imitate life, or that life must perfectly imitate fictive categories and exemplary models of art and discourse. Indeed, these characters represent what one may consider historical and poetic fundamentalists of "perfect imitation." Thus, too, one's approach toward a historical and aesthetic method (i.e., imitatio) is shown to go hand in hand with ethical practice. 31 As a second-rate reader and critic, the friend thus resembles the second-rate aesthetician and social ethicist Don Quixote. For both characters understand the Renaissance doctrine of aesthetic imitatio and moral exemplarity as an uncritical and noninventive aping, not simply of models, but of either stories or histories about models. Referring to the purely aesthetic domain, E. C. Riley points out that in Cervantes' time, such slavish and unimaginative imitation of models was considered to be a typical practice of mediocre artists and was often criticized as a reprehensible form of plagiarism, or even as "stealing" (1962, 61-63). In his Epilogue to the Parnassus (Adjunta al Parnaso) , Cervantes himself criticizes what the friend would doubtless consider "perfect imitation" as a type of theft that is worthy of the legendary Cacus: Item, it is declared that one ought not to deem a thief the poet who steals a verse from someone else and fits it into his own [verses], so long as it not the whole concept and the entire poem, for in such a case he would be as great a thief as Cacus. (Item, se advierte que no ha de ser tenido por ladr6n el poeta que hurtare alglin verso ajeno, y Ie encajare entre los suyos, como no sea todo el conzied madness of Cardenio that reminds the protagonist of Orlando, thereby deflecting Don Quixote momentarily from the most perfect model for action-in this case, Amadis: "[W]hy should Don Quixote suddenly add the imitation of Orlando to his project when he has just spent several paragraphs instructing Sancho that the imitation of Amadls is sufficient to make one a perfect knight? The answer lies in the figure of Cardenio, whose 'furia' was described only a few pages earlier, and whose appearance recalls that of the mad Orlando in canto 23 of Ariosto's text" (Hampton 1990,261). 31. Riley points out, "There is nothing notably unusual in his [Don Quixote's] seeking to imitate some exemplary hero in life, or, like a courtier, to emulate the best in previous models. But what is noteworthy is that he is also behaving very like an artist" (1962,64).

"This Is Not a Prologue"

151

cepto y toda la copla entera, que en tal caso tan ladr6n es como Caco.) (1973, 190)32

It is no mere coincidence, I think, that the friend who encourages a superficial form of imitatio is the same character who flippantly encourages other forms of plagiarism, together with the false attribution of sonnets. Nor does it seem mere coincidence that Cervantes should show him to be conversant with the classical literature of theft: '''If you deal with thieves, I can tell you the story of Cacus, since I know it by heart.'" ("Si tratiredes de ladrones, yo os dire fa historia de Caco, que fa se de coro") (DQ I: Prologue, 56; emphasis added). The type of imitatio that the friend counsels, moreover, is shown to be the narrator's method of choice as a writer of prologues and a historian. In a thoroughly uncritical fashion, that narrator chooses to compose his prologue chiefly by transcribing his friend's pronouncements, paradoxically called razones, or "words," but also denoting "reasons," thus akin to the Greek logoi: "[W] ithout questioning them [the friend's words and reasonings] I judged them to be fitting and from them verbatim I attempted to make this prologue" ([S]in ponerlas [las razones del amigo] en disputa las aprobe por buenas y de elias mismas quise hacer este prologo) (DQI: Prologue, 58; emphasis added). I shall discuss in the following chapter how, as editor as well as narrator of the "history"-for us the fictional narrative about Don Quixote-the narrator does everything within his power to make his narrative appear a sequential ordering and transcription of sources and models; that is, to make his "work" appear as patchwork. Imitation, understood as unquestioning transcription, is assumed to be a sign of historical credibility. Hence, as it is for the friend, and for Don Quixote, a slavish imitation of models"perfect imitation" -is the guiding ideal behind the narrator's endeavors. The upshot of the foregoing observations about the narrator's friend is not that the author simply affirms or denies the "truth" of that character's statements, or that he offers those statements simply for the reader's praise, censure, approval, or disapproval. As the parody of a particular kind of reader and critic, the friend plainly describes the purpose, genre, and method of the "history" to the narrator's satisfaction. Indeed, both characters in the Prologue-both friendr--are cut from the same "philosophical" cloth. For them, it seems that the "historical" work represents nothing but an "invective," since the folly in the narrative springs solely from the hidalgo and the romances of chivalry. According to their own remarks, the friend and the narrator seem to perceive nothing but nobility in the knight's profession and his "philosophy." Because they nowhere imply that knights-errant 32. Without referring to the friend in the Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I, Riley also quotes this passage from the Epilogue to the Pamassus in connection with Cervantes' equation between unimaginative imitation, plagiarism and "theft" (1962,62-63).

152

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

or knight-errantry as described in the romances constitute an impossibility-something that either does not, or cannot, exist-they are shown to share the protagonist's "philosophy" in much the same way as the "second author." Their invective is therefore limited to aping a conventional denunciation or "invective" of chivalresque books that led an hidalgo to lose his wits. Yet with no sense of irony or contradiction, these characters extol the protagonist's lunatic project as the endeavor of a cavalier and, implicitly, accept the veracity of chivalric romance. On the one hand, then, the friend and narrator would seem to represent the author's parody of those persons who, while denouncing the romances in conventional terms, still hold to simplistic, quixotic doxa concerning the "Christian hero"-the conceptual foundation of the" illfounded construction of those knight books' (emphasis added). On the other hand, those two characters in the Prologue also represent an aspect of the parody that Cervantes seems to aim at those persons who would censor the romances of chivalry on the grounds that they will be read as true histories. As a proponent of such "reasoning," one would have to assert that a chief purpose behind Cervantes' creation of his protagonist would be to show how the romances of chivalry might well lead to a proliferation of Don Quixotes throughout the Spanish Empire and, perhaps, the whole of Christendom. Is it at all plausible to think that in creating his protagonist, the author of Don Quixote shares, rather than ridicules, such a social and moral "concern"? Is it really plausible to hold that Cervantes thinks that some readers of Don Quixote, like the protagonist and, perhaps, the "second author," the narrator and his friend need to be thoroughly disabused of the opinion that the romances are historically true? Finally, is it plausible to believe that Cervantes' fiction would change the minds of such "readers"?33 What emerges from the text, then, is that the author uses the friend in much the same way that he uses the narrator of the Prologue. In particular, that author deploys the statements of the friend, as he does the statements of the narrator, to broach conventional categories and issues that call our attention to the unconven33. The critic to argue most forcefully in favor of Cervantes' sharing this "concern" is Daniel Eisenberg (1982, 119-29). AB Eisenberg later claims: "Certainly one lesson Cervantes wanted the reader to take from Don Quixotewas not to read such works [the romances of chivalry], or at the very least to use them properly, recognizing them as entertainment, not as true history or guides for behavior" (1987, 58). Eisenberg also asserts that in Cervantes' narrative, characters who "read" the romances of chivalry "have serious problems." Although he immediately mentions Maritornes and her approving attitude toward "sexual liasons between unmarried people," it is clear that she is unable to read, and far from clear that the romances are the "cause" of her attitude. She does not seem to require the romances to believe as she does. Like so many other characters in Cervantes' narrative, her interpretation of what she knows about the romances of chivalry is a function of who she is, or perhaps who she is compelled to be. Eisenberg also makes the same equation between the romances (cause) and folly (effect) with respect to the protagonist: "It is the unmarried country hidalgo who devours them passionately; loses his reason, his teeth, which are

"This Is Not a Prologue"

153

tional genre, purpose, and poetic method of his work. Yet the friend also resembles the narrator in that his conventional categories, and his conventional understanding of the pertinent aesthetic issues, become the object of parody and bog down in antinomy. If, for instance, the friend is right to claim, and exemplify, that the romances of chivalry are "abhorred by many and praised by many more" (aborrecidos de tantos y alabados de muchos mas) (DQ I: Prologue, 58), uncritical abhorrence of those works, in perfect imitation of received opinion, seems no less an object of the author's parodic craftsmanship than uncritical praise. Moreover, as in the case of the narrator-and as in the case of Erasmus's Folly-the "learning" of the friend comprises a random collection of maxims (adagia) , commonplaces and misquotations that he is eager to trot out at the slightest provocation. So in their use of "learning" and "doctrine," both the friend and the narrator seem to bear no small resemblance to Sancho in his parroting of "popular maxims" and proverbial "wisdom." In this light, it seems entirely appropriate that the already discredited narrator should react to his friend's conventional remarks with speechless awe: "I remained in great silence as I listened to what my friend was telling me" (Con silencio grande estuve escuchando 10 que mi amigo me deda) (DQ I: Prologue, 58; emphasis added). In addition, one can hardly avoid noting the author's irony behind the narrator's laudatory remarks: [I]n which [prologue] you will see, gentle reader, my friend's sound judgment, my good fortune in coming upon such a counselor in a moment of

worth more than diamonds, and, ultimately and tragically, his life" (1987, 58). Again, on such a view, Cervantes puts forth his protagonist as a verisimilar character (and I believe he does), whose madness stems solely from his reading the romances, in order to issue two warnings to his readers. First: "Stop doing this"; and Second: "This could happen to you." My resistance to such a view follows from the conviction that it is at best unlikely that Cervantes thought the romances of chivalry to have such magically transformative powers on their readership. I also think it unlikely that Cervantes wrote with the hope of reaching such a gullible audience whom he would cure of their perverse reading habits-that is, if they can read in the first place. Moreover, in contemporary parlance, the cause of the protagonist's madness seems overdetermined. In the opening chapter of Cervantes' fiction, a perty, unmarried, and conspicuously nameless hidalgo is given to a life of frustration, idleness, and routine. He is, in short, a "nobody" bereft of heroic accomplishments such as those of his ancestors. Unmarried, he is also loveless, or deficient in both heroics and erotics. He also suffers from a severe humoral imbalance that predisposes him toward madness and deranged fantasies. He is, additionally; the type of reader who looks upon the sophistical phrases of Feliciano de Silva as philosophical problems clamoring for a logical solution. The role of the romances is to provide Don Quixote with "artistic" raw material for him to enact his madness and give that madness its peculiar form. Our hidalgo suffers from severe problems no matter what he reads. Banish the romances of chivalry ftom the Spanish Empire and, instead of a Don Quixote, the same country hidalgo might well become the lovelorn shepherd Quijotiz, as he thinks of becoming as he approaches his village for the last time, at the close of Part II. Banish all romance or secular literature from the Spanish Empire, and that kind of reader might well fancy himself a Joshua, a Samson, or one of the Machabees.

154

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

great need, and your relief in coming upon such a sincere and straightforward history of the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha. ([E]n el cual [el pr610go] veras, lector suave, la discreci6n de mi amigo, la buena ventura mia en hallar en tiempo tan necesitado tal consejero, yel alivio tuyo en hallar tan sincera y tan sin revueltas fa historia del famoso don Quijote de la Mancha.) (DQ I: Prologue, 58; emphasis added)

As implied here, it seems that one would have to be a "gentle" reader indeed to accept the statements of the friend in an uncritical fashion, without considering the moral and intellectual authority of the source. And as implied in this passage, it would seem that only an "idle" reader would understand either the narrator's or the author's historia [story or history] about Don Quixote to be "sincere and straightforward." In fact, it would seem that to accept the friend's statements as the author's own voice or the author's own declaration of authorial purpose is to inscribe oneself in the text as the kind of "amusing and well-informed" reader and critic which the author parodies through that very character, or "reader." Just as the narrator's "Prologue" is distinct from that of the author, so the purpose and genre of the "history," as described by the friend, differ from those of the author's fiction. As the friend both accurately and reductively suggests, the "book" of the narrator strives at once to be a narrow "invective" against the romances of chivalry as well as an equally narrow, and antithetical, "history" about a "noble" protagonist. It is a "history," in other words, that strives, per impossibile, to be "hard" on the chivalric romances and the hidalgo, while remaining "soft" on the project of the "noble knight." As the author subtly suggests amid the conventional opinions and contradictions of the friend, the fiction will use the "history" and its paradoxical hero in a complex parody of chivalric romances, which not only exploits both the strengths ("nobilities") and weaknesses of the genre, but also parodies the facile "philosophies" according to which those works are commonly made the object of praise or censure. In characteristically paradoxical fashion, the author enumerates the strengths of the "romances of chivalry" through the canon of Toledo-the character who also provides the most sustained criticism of the genre on both aesthetic and ethical grounds. 34 Briefly stated, the Canon is said to claim that the primary strength of those works lies in the scope they provide for the author's imagination. He 34. For a sustained analysis of this passage, in the light of literary theory that prevailed in Cervantes' time, particularly that of Cervantes' Italian contemporary Torquato Tasso, see Forcione 1970, 91-130.

"This Is Not a Prologue"

155

speaks, specifically, of "the opportunity they [offer] for a good mind to reveal itself through them, since they [provide] a broad and spacious field in which the pen may flow, free from all hindrance" (el sujeto que [ofrecen] para que un buen entendimiento pudiese mostrarse en ellos, porque [dan] largo y espacioso campo por donde sin empacho alguno pudiese correr la pluma) (DQ I: 47, 566). This strength relates to what the canon calls the "untrammeled writing of these books" (escritura desatada destos libros), which permits the author to exploit a virtually infinite range of generic, poetic, and rhetorical registers: "to display his skill in the epic, lyric, tragedy, and comedy, with all the parts contained in the sweet and pleasant sciences of poetry and oratory" (mostrarse epico, lirico, tragico, c6mico, con todas aquellas partes que encierran en sf las duldsimas y agradables ciencias de la poesfa y de la oratoria) (DQ I: 47, 567). He even repeats the idea of those prose works' epic potential: "for one can write epic in prose as well as verse" (que la epica tambien puede escrebirse en prosa como en verso). Oddly, too, those same works allow the author to achieve nothing less than "the worthiest purpose that writing can seek, which is to join instruction and delight" (el fin mejor que se pretende en los escritos, que es ensefiar y deleitar juntamente) (DQ I: 47, 567). Presumably the author of such a work would be capable of delighting his readership without lapsing into the absurdities that the canon roundly denounces (DQI: 47, 564-66), and to instruct his readership, in both ethical and intellectual matters, without preachment. Indeed, unlike the friend, though seeming to echo his words, the canon also perceives in the chivalric romances the possibility for an author's deft use of erudition: "He can display his powers now as an astrologer, now as an excellent cosmographer, now as a musician, now as learned in affairs of state, and he may even have occasion to display his powers as a conjurer if he so pleases" (Ya puede mostrarse astr6logo, ya cosm6grafo excelente, ya musico, ya inteligente en las materias de estado, y tal vez Ie vendra la ocasi6n de mostrarse nigromante, si quisiere) (DQI: 47, 566). It is important to keep in mind, however, that the canon's laudatory remarks are limited to the potential strengths that actual romances of chivalry fail to realize, thereby making those works, in the character's view, deserving of censure. It also bears stressing that the canon's remarks represent an oblique rather than direct allusion to Don Quixote, the fictional work in which they occur. Hardly a mere "invective," Cervantes' work exploits the aforementioned strengths, but in a different manner from what is expressed through the words of the canon. For that character clearly does not discourse about a work of literary parody, whose protagonist is in any way a fool or a madman. Rather, the canon discusses and claims to have begun, without finishing, a wholly serious epic centering on an

156

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

exemplary hero. He thus points to a work that (unlike Don Quixote) contains no trace of "mockery" in relation to the protagonist, paradoxical or otherwise. 35 Though accurate, it would reveal little of the author's own inventiveness simply to state that he advocates a type of imitatio combining a keen observation of "life" with the transformative and inventive use of models. Indeed, Cervantes' conception of imitatio seems more complex than can be expressed by way of simple formulation. The friend's statements on the subject of imitatio in the Prologue to Part I both broach and dramatize the paradoxes of the problem. For, through that character, the author inventively illustrates his own understanding of the "doctrine" of inventive imitatio by perfectly imitating the most conventional pronouncements in favor of slavish imitation. It is thus left to the reader to weigh the distinction between artless and inventive imitatio, now that some form of perfect imitation and invention are shown to be inseparable. Put another way, a conventional type of perfect imitation is shown to preclude invention. Yet the best type of invention is shown to require some enlarged type of perfect imitation, a "more perfect" form of "perfect imitation." In short, the author uses the friend's statements concerning imitatio not so much to discuss, as to demonstrate, his paradoxical method of imitating models. that is, to demonstrate his own, mixed brand of parody. Cervantes alerts his readers to the parodic context of the friend's solemn pronouncements by consistently portraying that character, through implicit mockery, as a semtliterate (bien entendido) fool (gracioso). Hence, the friend anticipates such half-educated characters in the fiction as the curate mentioned as one of the protagonist's only two friends at the start of the narrative, the humanist primo (a word meaning both "cousin" and "dolt") who accompanies Don Quixote and Sancho to the Cave of Montesinos (II, 22-23) and the "university graduate" Sanson Carrasco who informs the knight and squire about Cide Hamete's history, Part I (II, 2-3) and who twice dons the garb of a knight in a first unsuccessful (II, 15) and later a successful effort (II, 54) to defeat Don Quixote in combat and thus force the crazed hidalgo to return home. Besides serving their other functions, these characters in the narrative, like the friend of the Prologue to Part I, provide "models" of conventional opinion and superficial learning. But, when seen as "models" for the author's parodic utterance, the friend's hackneyed, or perfectly imitative, statements about the "history's" genre, purpose, and method take on an innovative meaning. In reference to the author's work, the 35. Eisenberg argues that Cervantes began to write, and may have completed, a serious epic about the legendary Spanish hero Bernardo del Carpio along the lines described by the canon, in "El 'Bernardo' de Cervantes fue su libro de caballerfas" (1983, 103-17). Eisenberg convincingly elaborates on this claim in A Study of''Don Quixote" (1987, 45-77).

"This Is Not a Prologue"

157

friend's statements represent partial "truths." Thus for reader and implied author alike, those statements also become the object of discriminating (rather than simply dismissive) laughter. 36 Similarly, this character's reductive orthodoxies, and consequent antinomies, represent the conventional material (model?) from which both author and reader may inventively piece together (componer) the mixed purpose of the fiction. In what amounts to a recapitulation of his previous remarks, the friend admonishes the narrator to respect the univocal genre, purpose, and method of the "history," by telling that narrator to write thus: "portraying [literally: painting] your intention to the best of your ability and by all possible means" (pintando, en todo 10 que alcanzaredes y fuere posible, vuestra intenci6n) (DQ I: Prologue, 58; emphasis added). Through this statement, as well, the author seems to give figuration (pinta) to the three elements composing his own "intention" and artistic design. To be sure, those three elements of the fiction's intent-its genre, purpose, and poetic method-can be broadly described as "parody," which may displaya varying measure of praise and censure for the model on which it depends. In particular, however, each of these three elements that seem to make up the fiction's intent finds its expression in a paradox. Generically a poetic "history," in which each of those two modes of discourse mocks and elevates the other to an extreme degree, the fiction pursues an implicit, dramatized purpose of enlarging categories of thought and expression through a playful strategy of mock praise. Within this generic or antigeneric framework, the fiction, beginning with its fictional Prologue, pursues its shocking, "alienating" purpose through an artistic method of inventive imitation, or textual and intertextual refashioning. Indeed, this mixed, parodic intent of Cervantes seems reflected, first of all, in his use of the friend's statements to effect nothing other than a parody of authorial intent. And, as exemplified here through the friend's citational and recitational pronouncement of "half-truths," the author's parody in both the Prologue and the narrative dramatizes a partial affirmation and partial denial of his models' content and form. But the author's work also yields a complex parody that transforms its models and their meaning, not excepting the "model" of the friend's conventional remarks. It thereby transforms and enlarges the rhetorical and literary tradition, or "construct" (mdquina), to which those models belong. As discussed earlier, the author's models in Don Quixote are by no means limited to chivalric romance, though these latter form a primary object of his parodic 36. For an interesting discussion of Renaissance laughter, see Bakhtin 1984, 59-155. Therein, Bakhtin observes: "[Flor the Renaissance . . . the characteristic trait of laughter was precisely the recognition of its positive, regenerating, creative meaning. This clearly distinguishes it from the later theories of the philosophy of laughter, including Bergson's, which bring out mostly its negative function" (1984,71).

158

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

imitation, in that they form a primary object of the protagonist's unique species of "perfect imitation." But as Luis Murillo has argued, even the protagonist's "code" of chivalry echoes such other literary models as chivalric verse and balladry (1988, 7-16). More important, both the Prologue and the narrative represent transformative parodies of fictional and nonfictional genres. As a whole, the fiction masquerading as epic history, a forerunner of both the modern and postmodern novel, derives its generic form from a parodic conflation of historical and poetic (romance) narratives. Further, Cervantes' unprecedented act of historical poesis in Don Quixote inventively derives its rhetorical strategy of paradoxy primarily from the Renissance merger "mock encomium/Ciceronian paradox" and the multiple genres, including the mock encomium, which belong to the "mixed," Renaissance tradition of Menippean or Varronian satireY Encapsulating the paradoxes that constitute the fictional "history's" generic form, its mock-encomiastic purpose and its inventively imitative method, the author's Prologue would thus represent a fictional parody of nonfictional prologues, as well as a complex parody, or mock encomium, of what Cervantes' contemporary Alonso L6pez Pinciano would deem fictional dialogues about aesthetic theory or "poetic philosophy." Similarly, besides the author's fictional targets, the narrator's invective "history" forms part of the author's "poetic" (fictional) parody, fUnctioning as a mock encomium, of historical narratives. For the poetic utterance titled Don Quixote parodies, or mockingly praises, the fUtile/necessary attempt of 37. Admittedly, these instances of literary overstretch rhat I perceive in Cervantes' Don Quixote evoke identifying ttaits of what Frye (1973, 309-14) and Bakhtin (1984, 112-21) designate as Menippean satire or, in Frye's term, the "anatomy." Drawing on borh rhose renowned critics, rhe scholar to argue most insistently in favor of categorizing Don Quixote wirhin rhe "genre" of Menippean satire or the "anatomy" is James Parr, as indicated in his title, Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (1988, 123-51). With less insistence, Forcione's earlier study discussed the similarities between rhat "satirical" tradition and some of Cervantes' writings, including Don Quixote (1984, 22 and passim). Eisenberg puts forth the persuasive thesis rhat if pressed, Cervantes himself would have ptobably classified his most acclaimed fiction as a "burlesque [or perhaps mock] book of chivalry" (libro de caballerlas burlesco) (1987, 79-107). Urbina (1990, 5-78) shows that "irony," rhough less of a satirical than a parodic kind, pervaded medieval romances of chivalry as far back as rhe works of Chretien de Troyes. He judges Cervantes as an innovator within that tradition and therefore prefers to designate the genre of Cervantes' masterpiece wirh the English term "romance" (35). Riley (1981; 1986, 11-13) argues for a flexible understanding of genre and against expecting either too much or too little from genre as a classificatory concept. Wirhout claiming rhat Cervantes himself would have categorized his work thus, Riley prefers to call Don Quixote a novel rather rhan a romance, since that work is clearly concerned to mainrain literary verisimilitude in a way rhat chivalric or pastoral romance is not. Murillo (1980, 51-70) is likewise less in favor of labeling and suggests understanding Don Quixote as a secularized, "festive" (referring to the popular feast of carnival rarher rhan solemn "feast days") affirmation and reversal of rhe "Renaissance epic" in rhe Italian tradition of Ariosto. Combining rhese views, I would contend that Murillo's idea of a reverse (mock) epic signals, so to speak, the height and deprh of Cervantes' generic reach in Don Quixote. Furthermore, one can plausibly argue rhat, if pressed on the matter by, say; a suspicious inquisitor, Cervantes would have probably labeled

"This Is Not a Prologue"

159

such narratives to conceal their dependence on various forms of "poetic" truth and discourse, which are shown to constitute the only traceable "sources" of a history's partial imitation and partial invention of "life." In a similar fashion, through his parody of the friend's limitations as reader and critic, the author enlarges, transforms, and opens up the category of "discreet reader." He points toward a method of reading of which the friend is shown to be incapable, bound as he is by dichotomous thinking and a narrow understanding of conventional orthodoxies. That character seems blind even to the possibility of a book that mingles praise with censure for the "chivalric romances" and their ideals. He would fail to understand how such an admixture of praise and censure, rather than a simple invective, better serves the purpose of enlarging aesthetic and ethical categories, while retaining their strengths, moving beyond their limitations and so undoing their fixity. The friend, Cervantes' caricature of bookish folly, is shown incapable, I believe, of providing a critical and discriminating reading of any work that belongs to the same rhetorical tradition as Erasmus's mock encomium, much less a generic innovation within that tradition. Probably nothing would prove more bewildering, or more unintelligible, for either the friend or the narrator, than a paradoxical work whose jests (burlas) are in earnest (veras); a work that further breaks with convention by freely mingling varying degrees of truth and falsity, or praise and censure; that places "wise" words in the mouths of such transparently "foolish" characters as Folly or Don Quixote; that portrays the folly in accepted forms of wisdom; that reveals the wisdom in what the world, or received opinion, judges his work as Eisenberg suggests: "burlesque book of chivalry" (libro de caballerlas burlesco). Under less threatening circumstances, however, I think it more in consonance with the rhetorical strategy evinced in Don Quixote that he would have responded with some polysemous equivalent of "basin-helmet in prose" (baciyelmo en prosa), a gesture that would expand rather than negate a designation such as the one suggested by Eisenberg. In light of Cervantes' text and its classification by excellent readers, it seems that what Cervantes achieves in Don Quixote represents a remarkably comprehensive synthesis and double-minded, parodic refashioning of, for him, the known tradition of fictional and nonfictional discourse, both oral and written. In a spirit of inventive imitation, he enlists his masterwork to transform that ttadition from within, affirming, denying, and enlarging the prevailing systems of discursive form and norm. It is my view, then, that Cervantes invents, in Don Quixote, a seminal, transitional work of fiction that respectfully validates, irreverently undoes, and successfully refashions the literary ttadition of his time. His work integrates and moves beyond what are thought to be contradictory categories of gente, stylistic register, and rhetorical persuasiveness (e.g., epiC/farce, high/low, history/poetry) into a work that remains paradoxical at all levels of content and form. Fittingly enough, Cervantes chose to perceive himself as a "great inventor" (gran inventor): an artist who discovers, ponders, and playfully re-creates his textual models. In view of such self-awareness and such ambition, it seems likely that he would recognize, and aim at, the groundbreaking quality of his achievement in Don Quixote. He would recognize that he had succeeded in creating a new gente, anti-gente and counter-gente which ultimately remains unclassifiable, except in anachronistic, protean reference to its continuing generation of modern, postrnodern, or later literary "offspring."

160

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

to be nothing but folly; that "renders" (pinta) a "world" that is neither wholly upside down nor right-side up, but always and everywhere moving in the middest. Respectively, the friend and the narrator are not only shown to be incapable of reading or writing such a paradoxical praise of "base things" as Erasmus' mock encomium. They are especially incapable of reading or writing such a mock epic, and satirical romance "history," as the author's Don Quixott'--namely, Cervantes' doubly paradoxical encomium of chivalric romance, or of the epic in its "base" form. They are incapable, in short, of realizing that, when viewed from a different perspective, the narrator's "history" represents that very work. In sum, both the narrator and his friend are shown to suffer from what we may call a hardening of the categories. Thus the friend's statements regarding authorial intent provide a model of orthodox categories that invite enlargement and transformation. In self-allusive fashion, those "model" statements of the friend are also the means whereby the author first brings such a transformation about. Conversely, the friend's discourse also represents a model of what readers of the author's fiction are called upon not simply to negate, but to enlarge and move beyond in their critical engagement with the text. The author's narrative thus beckons to be read as an extreme instance of paradoxy, which invites its readers to expand and, unlike the narrator, "to dispute" (poner en disputa) the many forms of aesthetic and ethical philosophia that appear in the fiction, without simply dismissing them, and without aping or uncritically "approving them as good" (tenerlas por buenas). But, more important, the narrative first startles readers into self-awareness; into acknowledging that, as such, all imitations and all statements in discourse-including "this statement"-are both true and false in some sense and to some degree. Next, that narrative challenges readers to exert their inherently mysterious "freedom" (libre albedrio). Up to a point, our lack of familial ties to the narrator's "history" makes us exempt and "free from all respect and obligation." We are free to "say of the history whatever you please" (DQ I: Prologue, 51). By extension, we are only partially bound to the poetic discourse of the author's fiction. We can say and even make what we please of the text. Yet, as the Prologue of 1605 implies, how we exercise our readerly prerogative upon Cervantes' text reflects not only our status as some type of "discreet" or "vulgar" readers, but also the wise/foolish manner in which we remain idle or involved with "this" or other texts. As set forth in the fiction, and specifically in the competing ideologies of its characters, the exercise or failure to exercise the inherently mysterious power of one's freedom determines one's growth in knowledge and self-knowledge over time. Beginning with the Prologue, Cervantes' fiction dramatizes, rather than preaches, that it is also freedom that allows us continually to exercise and expand our complementary powers of inventio and imitatio, to grow in our capacity as

"This Is Not a Prologue"

161

"inventors" (ingeniosos) and componedores, or compositors, of discourse; and thus to enlarge our categories of judgment, speech, and action. A final contrast in the Prologue between the character's statements and the text's dramatized message emerges from a concluding bit of advice from the friend to the narrator: Strive as well that, reading your history, the melancholic will feel moved to laughter, the merry will be more so, the simpleminded will not feel annoyed, the discreet will admire its inventiveness, the grave will not scorn it, nor the prudent cease to praise it. (Procurad tambien que, leyendo vuestra historia, el melanc6lico se mueva a risa, el risuefio la acreciente, el simple no se enfade, el discreto se admire de la invenci6n, el grave no la desprecie, ni el prudente deje de alabarla.) (DQ I: Prologue, 58) Of course, it is reasonable to assume that the author intended his fiction to appeal to the tastes of a variegated readership, in full agreement with his character's rather conventional remarks. Owing to the range of its rhetorical and thematic registers, the text has the power to appeal to "serious" readers, full of ethical and aesthetic purpose ("grave," "prudent"); the most diverse temperaments ("melancholic," "merry," or sanguine) and the most diverse intellectual gifts ("discreet" or "simpleminded"). And yet, one detects another dimension beneath those remarks: namely, the author's allusion to the fact that each reading of his fiction remains as much a function of the reader as it is of the text. Cervantes' fiction self-consciously suggests that we will read and judge the narrative, the author, the protagonist, or other characters according to who we are and whom we are willing to laugh at, or see, in the textual mirror.38

38. From the discussion above, Cervantes' text seems to imply an understanding of its readers that closely resembles that of a contemporary critical tradition called Reader-Response Theory. Important writings within this tradition can be found in the collections by Tompkins (1980) and Suleiman and Crosman (1980). Furthermore, Cervantes' Don Quixote would also seem to offer a prime example of what Barthes calls a "writerly" work, in which the aim is "to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer [rewriter] of the text" (1986,4). Like Iser's "implied reader" of modern and contemporary fiction (1987), Cervantes' "consumers" are invited to make incremental sense of paradoxes and ambiguities that they encounter in the fiction. Nonetheless, it is important to recall that today's "reader-response" was "rhetoric" or rhetorical posture for writers and productive readers in the Renaissance. Besides Colie's book on Renaissance paradox (1966), in more recent studies by Kahn (1985), Levao (1985), and Rajan (1985), it is argued throughout that Renaissance practitioners of humanist, Erasmian poetics strove to create perplexing, self-conscious works and held a sophisticated view of the reader's role in negotiating and inventively refashioning textual paradoxes and puzzles.

Paradoxes of Imitation The Quest for Origins and Originality

One unsettling consequence of identifYing the coincidence between art and life, and identifYing all human discourse as insubstantial artifice, is that we come to perceive much of "life" (specifically, knowledge, history, and therefore historiography) as an infinite series of imitations imitating imitations. In addition, the insubstantiality of discourse in both the historical and poetic modes paves the way for an infinite number of imitations within imitations. For it seems clear that in historical discourse and, indeed, in "histories," reportedly factual accounts may derive from what someone said about what someone said about what someone said, ad infinitum. And it seems clear, as well, that the fictional "I" or "we" within an actual author's poetic utterance can be said to produce a poetic utterance containing a (more) fictional speaking subject, who in turn can be said to do likewise, and so on. More simply, the insubstantiality of discourse allows us to insert an utterance within an utterance and to generate a potentially endless series of

164

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

either fictional or non-fictional stories, or a potentially infinite number of stories within stories within stories. Thus in Don Quixote, the author's dramatization of the time-honored paradox of life in art and art in life repeatedly leads us to confront a literary variation on the equally classical paradoxes of infinite series and infinite regress. Whether, in a manner of speaking, we move laterally or horizontally within the text, instances of imitation in Don Quixote leave us with the impression that with each succeeding or receding imitation, we find ourselves at a farther remove from the original source, the original utterance, and the original model, and thus from "truth," "life," and "nature." In particular, the author of the fiction exploits the insubstantiality of discourse through such related narrative techniques as the frame story, embedding, the effect of Chinese boxes, mise en abime, and levels of narration, in order to enhance the appearance of the knight's and the squire's "reality," as well as the "history's" "veracity." As Riley asserts, such feats of poetic legerdemain "give the novel an appearance of receding depths, by comparison with which most other prose fiction is two-dimensional" (1962, 42). Indeed, it seems clear that Cervantes draws on such techniques in order to test the limits of and dramatize the overlap between literary "verisimilitude" and historical "truth" (Riley 1962, 43). Additionally, however, it also seems clear that the author of Don Quixote enlists such techniques in order to underscore their status as techniques and to draw the interested reader's attention to the appearance of "more original sources" and the "receding depths" of "reality" as illusions or discursive tricks. In part, my aim in the following pages is to discuss how the fiction's artful discourse of imitation flaunts the insubstantiality and trickery of discourse itself as a form of artistic imitatio that calls for inventio. In this chapter I will pay special attention to how Cervantes conflates such apparent contraries as source and copy, model and imitation, or container and contained. And I will examine how, as a result of these conflations, Cervantes encourages and frustrates our efforts to identify the "reliability" of competing voices and the "reality" of competing versions that relate the same "events." Through an inventive use and demonstration of discursive trickery, Don Quixote represents an instance of discourse and imitation acting against themselves. Yet the work also represents, for the very same reasons, an effective use of discourse and imitation acting in their own defense. Cervantes' text invites us to take part in a complex, literary game and to do so both in jest and in earnest. For if the fiction reveals that both the process and products of imitation and discourse involve the creation of "appearance," it also reveals that only within that process and its products is "truth"-as learned ignorance-able to occur.

Paradoxes of Imitation

165

Hence the present analysis centers on a use of imitation and discourse in Don Quixote that is inherently festive. The work presents both a parody and celebration, praise and censure, of imitation and discourse, whose insubstantiality guarantees, not only their fictiveness, but also their suppleness. As Cervantes' mock encomium of discourse reveals, our recognizing the fictiveness of our discourse and imitations allows us to fashion, refashion, and enlarge the categories by which we fashion or refashion ourselves and our experience. We can thus undertake such refashionings and enlargements more in dialogue than in conflict with the empirical world of matter and social intercourse, as well as the inner world of desire, illusion, and dreams.

Inside and Outside the Frame: A Story About Stories Within Stories If, through its mad protagonist and his adventures, Don Quixote remains chiefly a parodic imitation of chivalric romances (libros de caballerias), it also contains imitations of virtually all genres of fictional and nonfictional discourse that prevailed in Cervantes' time. To begin with an obvious example, the nameless innkeeper of the first sally, the characters in his employ, Gines de Pasamonte, and the other galley slaves are all drawn in parodic imitation of picaresque literature. The picaresque model that looms especially large is the work by Cervantes' chief rival in the domain of prose fiction and the most successful such work of the time: Mateo Aleman's Guzmdn de Alfarache, also published in two parts (1599, 1602). This is so, notwithstanding Cervantes' causing his fiction's most accomplished trickster, Gines de Pasamonte (Gi-nes-de-Pa-sa-mon-te), to make explicit reference only to Lazarillo de Tormes rather than to what sufficiently informed readers know to be this character's immediate model, Guzman de Alfarache (Guz-man-de-Al-fa-ra-che), of like-sounding name, who is likewise a galley slave engaged in writing his autobiography (Dunn 1982, 119). However, in a manner that parodies and transformatively imitates both the character and actions of his model, whom Aleman portrays as having written the tale of his own religious conversion, Gines de Pasamonte is in the process of writing as well as "living" the story of his impenitent, criminal exploits. Another example: the interweaving tales of Dorotea, Cardenio, Fernando, and Luscinda creatively imitate what was called the "sentimental novella" (novela sentimental) as well as the "comedy of intrigue" (comedia de enredo) before culminating

166

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

in the crowded, multigeneric parody of anagnorisis and poetic justice at Juan Palomeque's inn. 1 Just as the tales of Zoraida, Ruy Perez de Viedma ("the Captive"), and Ana Felix creatively imitate the "Moorish novel" (novela morisca), so the tales of Marcela, Gris6stomo, and the "feigned Arcadia" overtly parody and imitate the pastoral novel. One finds a striking parody of formal disputation in the debate between the protagonist and the canon of Toledo that, as already discussed in connection with the Dialogues by Pero Mexia, traces back to the Scholastic model of Disputed Questions and, ultimately, the Socratic Dialogues of Plato. 2 Don Quixote provides equally formal, mock "declamations" on the Golden Age, Liberty, and Arms and Letters. Moreover, Cervantes' fictional work not only offers a parody of other fictional forms, but also constitutes a putative "history" and biography that imitates and parodies historical narratives. Likewise, the Prologue of 1605 is chiefly, though not exclusively, a parodic imitation of prologues (including itself) and their process of creation (including its own). To return to the main narrative, the most obvious examples of embedding imitations within imitations occur when the author has his characters tell stories or read them aloud. Probably the most conspicuous instance of a presumably "more imaginary" story being told within the "history" occurs when the priest reads aloud the exemplary "Tale of Impertinent Curiosity" (El curioso impertinente) at Juan Palomeque's inn (I, 33-35). Here the author introduces what appears to be a subordinate level not simply of imitation, but specifically of narration. In addition, however, this circumstance dramatizes equally well the potential for both an endless series and infinite levels of imitation. Indeed, that exemplary tale remains a fiction (an imaginary tale) within the heterocosm of the characters. In short, that tale is doubly fictional: a fiction for fictional "persons." Yet unlike those imaginary "persons" or characters, the reader can also view that exemplary tale as either the author's transformative imitation or his transformed model of the tales involving Dorotea, Cardenio, Fernando, and Luscinda. For part of that tale's meaning depends on where it is situatedindeed, where the author elected to situate it-within the main narrative. In this regard, it is unnecessary for the reader to know that the historical author, Cervantes, wrote "The Tale of Impertinent Curiosity" before Part I of Don Quixote. Rather, it is necessary to recognize only that, even as represented within the fictional frame of the putative "history," the writing of the exemplary tale most likely predates those characters' recent adventures, and certainly predates 1. Anthony Close focuses on this scene of anagnorisis at Juan Palomeque's inn to argue against the possibility of subjecting Cervantes' fiction to deconstructive readings (1990a, 69-91). 2. Along similar lines, Alban Forcione discusses Don Quixote's response to the canon of Toledo as a "mock-discorso" (1970, 110-13).

Paradoxes of Imitation

167

their arrival at Juan Palomeque's inn. A fact unknown to the characters, and hitherto unknown to the reader, is that, after a fashion, "The Tale of Impertinent Curiosity" was awaiting, or was made to await, those four characters' arrival. On the one hand, then, from the reader's extrafictionallocus, which remains invisible to the characters, it seems possible to understand that the characters listen not only to a mirror of their recent past, but also to a "model" story after which their own stories, or "lives," are inventively shaped. Their "reality" may then seem to derive from, and to seem "less real" or "more imaginary" than, what they are themselves shown to perceive as an "imaginary" tale. On the other hand, owing to where the exemplary tale appears in the context of the narrative, the reader is no less justified in thinking that the same exemplary tale now functions as an imitation and variation of the "model" story provided by those characters' recent exploits. In short, both tales act alternately as "model" and "imitation" for each other, depending on the vantage from which the reader chooses to view them. Tellingly, the ability to perceive how the tales function in that seemingly contradictory fashion, and how those tales frustrate and parody the reader's efforts to establish a hierarchy of comparatively "real" or "imaginary" levels of imitation, requires one to assess the narrative as the product of artistic design, and as the utterance of an implied author. For this reason, an important dimension of meaning to be found in the author's use of imitative levels-deployed in testing the limits between the "real" and the "imaginary"-strains, without necessarily exceeding, the reach of a structuralist framework such as that of Gerard Genette (1980). Predicated upon the assumption of an ideal narrative as a self-enclosed system, such a critical framework would lead one to identify either "subordinate levels of narration" or "transgressions" of those levels solely in reference to an "extradiegetic" perspective-the highest level-assumed to belong to a principal narrator (Genette 1980,228-31). Although it generates a host of useful observations and queries, that extradiegetic point of reference represents a critical choice that may obscure subtleties inhering within Cervantes' work. In the specific example of the relation between the tales of the four characters named above and the exemplary "Tale of Impertinent Curiosity," only an extrafictional perspective shared by both reader and author (i.e., "above" or beyond the "extradiegetic" level) lets the reader reflect upon the arrangement of the tales as a message conveyed from the implied author to the reader. Such a message forms part of the author's self- and reader-conscious narrative. In other words, the embedding of that exemplary tale not only serves the function of reinforcing and imitating recent "events" within the fictional frame of the narrative. In the self-conscious work of Don Quixote, that embedding also serves to deepen the continuing dialogue between author and reader, on an extrafictional plane,

168

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

about aesthetic questions that are first dramatized in the Prologue. Indeed, that instance of embedding constitutes a technique that one may also interpret as a sign. The author communicates a paradoxical message to the reader by enlisting the text itself as a practical dramatization of the same open questions that are dramatized, from a different perspective or series of perspectives, within the fictional frame of the "history." Further, the author seems to invite the reader to ponder how the meaning behind a particular construct-the reading of an exemplary tale by a particular group of characters in a particular set of circumstanceswill differ according to circumstances, and according to whether one judges or interprets that tale from inside or outside the fictional frame. From the extrafictional perspective of the reader, shared by the implied author, one can judge that exemplary tale "correctly" as either the imitation or model of those tales involving Dorotea, Cardenio, Fernando, and Luscinda. Moreover, one can judge those characters' "lives" either as imitating, or being imitated by, the exemplary tale. Such simultaneously contrary meanings remain inaccessible to all our characters' perspectives, including the "extradiegetic" perspective of the narrator. A related variation of imitations both within and of imitations ensues from Dorotea's acting as the princess Micomicona from Micomiconia, or Princess Monkey-Monkey from Monkey-Monkeyland. The emphasis in both her name and actions is, of course, on imitation as "aping." Furthermore, her assumed name, Micomicona, also characterizes her as a hyperbolically comic figure of drama. She is, on the one hand, a "comic lady" (c6mica). On the other hand, the Spanish augmentative" -ona" affixed to that name alludes to her habit of "overdoing it" or "hamming it up" in a doubly fictional role. The princess, who is "really" Dorotea, acts in what amounts to the curate's comic drama, staged in order to return Don Quixote to his home in La Mancha. Hence Cervantes has Dorotea, a character fashioned after the heroine of the sentimental novella, willfolly imitate a distressed damsel of chivalric romance whom Don Quixote must avenge and restore to her rightful throne. In this way, the author increases the string of imitations, together with the degree of his work's self-conscious, multigeneric parody. Through her "life," already a parodic imitation of a literary form, Dorotea parodies, imitates, and parodies the imitation of yet another literary form. Furthermore, as emblematized, hyperbolically, in this multiply imitative imitation that Dorotea enacts and is, Cervantes' entire fiction projects an inventive imitation, or mirror, of itself to a degree that defies comprehensive treatment. Thus, to illustrate this point, let me note the fiction's act of self-imitation only in general terms. First of all, Part II imitates and varies Part I in structure and content alike. The first seven chapters of Part I treat of our protagonist's fall into madness, his first sally, and his first return home. Phrased another way, the action in these seven opening chapters represents Don Quixote's preparations

Paradoxes of Imitation

169

for his second sally, or his first sally with Sancho. In parallel fashion, the first seven chapters of Part II relate his preparations for his third and longest sally, which is only his second with Sancho. Further, in mock variation of the classical, heroic plot structure of sortieachievement-return, each of the knight's three sallies follows a threefold pattern: adventures on the road, broken by sojourns at some interior setting, and return to home and bed. In Part I, apart from the protagonist's own domicile, the interior settings are two inns, which Don Quixote takes to be castles. In Part II, apart from his domicile and more inns, which he no longer takes to be castles, Don Quixote stays at the mansion of Don Diego de Miranda (II, 18), the probably modest home of Basilio (I, 22), the real castle of the duke and duchess (II, 30-57), which our hero thinks "enchanted," and the residence of Antonio Moreno in Barcelona (II, 62). The exterior settings of Part I are the road, or Spain's Camino Real and the wilds of Sierra Morena. In Part II, though he spends more time indoors, Don Quixote also encounters adventures on the road and descends into the subterranean Cave of Montesinos (II, 22-23). More generally, the setting for Part I is rural and most of its characters are peasants, excepting Fernando, Cardenio, Luscinda, and the hidalgo protagonist who fancies himself a knight. Without abandoning either the country or peasant characters, Part II culminates in the courtly ambience of the duke and duchess's palace and the bustling city of Barcelona. E. C. Riley has pointed out that one may discern, grafted on to the main narratives of Parts I and II alike, an equal number of interpolated tales, or "extraneous episodes," defined thus: "A story of more than anecdotic length, with a certain coherence, and of which the origin and development, but not necessarily the conclusion, have nothing to do with Don Quixote or Sancho" (1986,79). In Part I, the interpolated tales deal with the following: (1) Marcela and Grisostomo (I, 11-14); (2) Dorotea, Cardenio, Fernando, and Luscinda (I, 23-24, 27-29, 36); (3) "The Tale of Impertinent Curiosity" (I, 33-35); (4) the Captive and Zoraida (I, 39-41); (5) Dona Clara and Don Luis (1,42-43); and (6) Eugenio and Leandra (I, 51) (Riley 1986, 79-86). The corresponding tales in Part II, which are better integrated into the core narrative about Don Quixote and Sancho, relate the stories of (1) Camacho's wedding (II, 19-21); (2) The braying adventure (II, 25,27); (3) Dona Rodriguez (II, 48, 52, 56, 66); (4) the nocturnal escape of Don Diego de la Llana's daughter in Barataria (II, 49); (5) Claudia Jeronima (II, 60); and (6) Ana Felix and Gaspar Gregorio (II, 54, 63, 65) (Riley 1986, 97-103). Besides the unmanageable number of its episodes' prefigurations and reconfigurations of other episodes and of other fictional and nonfictional texts, the

170

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

design of Cervantes' paradoxical fiction leads these interpolated tales and their characters to act as a series of mirrors on the main narrative and its protagonists. This is so, I believe, especially at the level of Don Quixote's thematics. But, rather than the grand theme of the Ideal against the Real that Friedrich Schlegel perceived in Cervantes' masterpiece, I would suggest that, beginning with its principals, the action in Don Quixote dramatizes a summarizing idea that relates, in that period's aesthetic terminology, to the potential dialogue or conflict between Art and Nature. From what was earlier discussed in reference to Mexia's distinction between "empiricals" (empiricos) and "rationalists" (racionales) within his Dialogue of the Physicians, one may describe the prevalent, Renaissance understanding of "art" as man's symbolic activity. One result of such activity is scientia, or systematic "knowledge," which prevents what Mexia calls "confusion and forgetting." The summarizing idea of Cervantes' fiction concerning the potential dialogue or conflict between Art and Nature would thus entail that author's dramatizations of potential dialogue or conflict between Literature and Life, History and Poetry, or Historical and Poetic Discourse. Characters in the main narrative and the interpolated tales thus come to mirror one another according to how they negotiate or enact this summarizing idea and its derivatives. In particular, as evinced primarily in Don Quixote, characters in both the main and interpolated tales seem guilty of folly and meet a sorry end to the extent that they strive to make the worlds of matter and social intercourse conform to chosen codes, models, or a rigid system of symbols. In the cases of Don Quixote, Marcela, Gris6stomo, Anselmo, Leandra, the braying aldermen, or Claudia Jer6nima, conflict or tragedy seem to ensue from a failure to conform one's symbolic "art" to or place it in dialogue with the demands of empirical and social experience. In Cervantes' fiction, the type of folly we may label as insanity, again such as that of Don Quixote, would therefore involve a thoroughgoing conflict between art and nature, or one's collapsing the dialogue, or the distinction, between literature and life or poetry and history. The lesser folly of stupidity or simplicity, such that of Mexia's "empiricals" and, in part, such as Sancho's gullibility or his artless repetition of proverbs, would involve a lack of inventiveness or an incompetent use of symbols. Thus, as illustrated in these examples, the very construction of the author's "imitation" (book) of imitations and of itself as imitation and the ethical/aesthetic questions that arise therefrom form an integral part of Cervantes' selfallusive text. The behavior of extrafictional readers in their capacity as a interpreters of "this narrative" both mirrors and transforms the behavior of all characters and voices within the heterocosm, from the "extradiegetic level" on down. And yet our sharing an implied author's perspective does not so much

Paradoxes of Imitation

171

invest our interpretations with authority, as it adds an extrafictional dimension of multiple, paradoxical meaning to the author's fictional narrative itself. That narrative invites the reader to ask what the author means, or what that author aims to dramatize, not only within a passage, but also by the author's constructing a passage in a particular way. By asking such questions, the reader may come to perceive not only how Cervantes dramatizes his content in the form of his narrative, but also how he self-consciously dramatizes what Hayden White would call "the content of the [narrative] form" (1987).

Original Copies: Versions of a Manuscript and a Battle in I, 8-9 A particularly self-conscious, and dizzying, instance of Cervantes' playfully embedding imitations within imitations occurs in that passage of Don Quixote, at the close of I, 8 and the beginning of I, 9, where a character dubbed only "second author" (segundo autor) seeks, discovers, and purchases a manuscript attributed to the Arab historian Cide Hamete. At this early stage in the narrative, the author introduces levels of what we may call either "reality" or "imaginariness." But it is important to stress that these levels resist anything akin to hierarchical plotting along a vertical axis. Moreover, in this passage, it comes to light that those shadowy and shifting levels of imitation may have formed part of the "history" from the start. At the close of the eighth chapter in Part I, Don Quixote engages a Basque from Biscay in mortal combat. Both men are astride their mounts-one a nag, the other a mule-swords raised for the attack. But just as the story of their fight reaches its climax, we read: But what mars the whole tale is that the author of this history leaves the battle in suspense at this very point and place, with the excuse that he found nothing more written besides what he has already set forth. (Pero esta el dafio de todo esto que en este punto y termino deja pendiente el autor desta historia esta batalla, disculpandose que no hall6 mas escrito, destas hazafias de don Quijote, de las que deja referidas.) (DQI: 8, 137) The so-called second author first emerges in the very next sentence of the narrative. Perhaps like ourselves, he is a frustrated reader of the truncated history. He refuses to believe that the people of La Mancha could be foolish

172

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

enough to let such a compelling story, and such a pivotal part of their past, fall into oblivion. The following chapter (I, 9) places that "second author" in the marketplace of Toledo, where he happens across the Arab manuscript by Cide Hamete that contains, to his happy amazement, a history of Don Quixote. Knowing no Arabic, he commissions its translation to a Spanish-speaking Moor. In seemingly miraculous fashion, this Arab history begins with nothing other than a continuation and conclusion of the battle left in suspense at the close of I, 8. And, only slightly less miraculous, what seems to be the manuscript's frontispiece contains a drawing of the same battle scene. Now, thanks to the fluency of Cervantes' tale, we may easily miss the degree of narrative complexity that the text introduces in these few pages, at the close of I, 8 and the start of I, 9. So let us identify the different voices and levels of narration for which we now have specific evidence. The enunciating subject, or the implicit, fictional "I," who tells us that the story of the battle is left in suspense, puts himself forward here as the writer, or editor, who is responsible for the final version of the "true history." For reasons to be discussed presently, I believe this voice to be the same voice, and the same character, as the narrator of the Prologue. And for the sake of clarity, I shall refer to him hereafter simply as the "narrator." In any event, our narrator leads us to believe that his chief source for events from I, 1 to I, 8 is a narrative by yet another "historian," strangely identified in the above quotation as "author of this history" (autor desta historia). That designation proves especially baffling, since the history we are reading seems to differ from what the narrator calls "this history." So, too, the "voice" we are now "hearing" (the narrator's) differs from that of the "author of this history," referred to in the third person. 3 More baffling still, the document ascribed to that "author" comes to an untimely end, and ceases even to be a source-much less the chief source-of the "history" we shall read from the start of I, 9 to the very end of Part II. So, no sooner do we learn of his "existence" as a source than that "author" ceases to be relevant at all to "this," the "history" we are reading. In any case, the so-called author of this history is himself but another compiler, compositor, or editor, working from an unnamed source or series of sources where "he found nothing more written" (no hall6 mas escrito). We never learn whether any of his sources is an eyewitness account. Hence the likelihood of other compilers, sources, and voices for utterances we read in the first eight chapters of the "true history." Indeed, it seems that we must now confront the possibility of countless and nameless imitations or models embedded within, or 3. As Mauricio Molho observes, this use of the third person makes the identification between the voice of the narrator-editor and that of the "author of this history" "a grammatically dubious case" (un caso gramaticalmente dudoso) (1989,278).

Paradoxes of Imitation

173

issuing from, other models or imitations. Likewise, we must confront the impossibility of pinpointing an original or reliable source for events that precede the manuscript's discovery. From I, 9 onward, the "true history" about the exploits of the knight and his squire, and about the fashioning of the "true history" itself, chiefly relies on the account by the "second author," which is a transcription of the translation of Cide Hamete's manuscript. The Arab historian is put forth as an eyewitness to the events he narrates, and is nowhere said to rely on sources of any kind. One may be tempted to hold that the chief sources for the entire "history" composed by the narrator consist of the narrative attributed to the "author of this history," the "second author's" account, the Moor's translation, and Cide Hamete's manuscript. But in the end, the narrator remains exceedingly vague about his sources for either the first eight chapters or the rest of what he proclaims to be his "true history." In the opening chapter of the narrative, for instance, in a passage relating to the possible surname of the crazed hidalgo, we read about an unspecified number of "authors who write on this subject" (autores que deste caso escriben) (DQI: 1,71). Further, we read about a discrepancy among various "authors" regarding the protagonist's first adventure-that is, about the very chronology of events in the "history": "There are some authors who say that the first adventure he met was that of Lapice Point. Others say it was that of the windmills" (Auto res hay que dicen que la primera aventura que Ie avino fue la del Puerto Lapice; otros dicen que la de los molinos de viento" (DQI: 1,81-82). Immediately thereafter, we receive an archivist's nonsolution to that discrepancy: but what I have been able to find out in this matter, and what I have found written in the annals of La Mancha, is that he traveled that whole day and, when evening fell, his nag and he felt tired and nearly dead from hunger. (pero 10 que yo he podido averiguar en este caso, y 10 que he hallado escrito en los anales de la Mancha, es que el anduvo todo aquel dia, y, al anochecer, su roein y el se hallaron cansados y muertos de hambre.) (DQ

I: 2, 82) These passages may issue from the "voice" of the narrator himself The reference to "the annals of La Mancha" clearly echoes the narrator's words in the Prologue concerning the "archives of La Mancha." But the implied author is hardly beyond confusing his readers about the narrative voice they are presumably

174

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

now "hearing." Hence, those passages may also represent the voice of the "author of this history" or that of another narrator-historian in some unspecified source. In other words, that passage, like most others in the narrative, may represent or approximate the words of almost any "authorial" voice belonging to almost any level of narration. What is more, besides written documents, the narrator relies on hearsay, as is evident from passages too numerous to name that begin with such phrases as "they say that" (dicen que), "opinion has it that" (hay opinion que), or even "they say that they say that" (dicen que dicen que) (Weiger 1988, 16---21), as anticipated in the following passage at the close of the Prologue to Part I: "Opinion has it, among all the inhabitants in the district of the Montiel Plains, that he was the most chaste lover and the most valiant knight" (Hay opini6n, por todos los habitadores del distrito del campo de Montiel, que fue el mas casto enamorado y el mas valiente caballero) (DQI: Prologue, 58). Nonetheless, it seems that the final version of the "history" is the work of the narrator and that we ultimately rely on his point of view. Yet it remains unclear how much of the written or hearsay evidence for the "history" reaches that narrator through either the discovered manuscript or interviews he conducted among local inhabitants; or how much of that evidence derives from translations or one of his other sources, named or unnamed. It therefore remains unclear, as well, how much of the "history" is transcribed, revised, or made up, and just where passages deriving from documentary and hearsay evidence fall within that "history's" presumptive hierarchy of narrative levels and voices. We can never be certain which voice we hear, or whether we hear any voice unfiltered, in a particular passage of the "history." Each of the narrative voices and levels for which we have a label-"narrator," "author of this history," "second author," "translator," "Cide Hamete"-thus represents a polyphonous blend of other, equally polyphonous voices and levels. The final form of the "true history" thus encourages, frustrates, and parodies our efforts to distinguish the copy from its original, or its source. Indeed, regarding the "true history," one can employ such apparent contraries as "source" and "copy," or "model" and "imitation," as relative, often interchangeable, terms. In this same section of the narrative, we find another self-conscious instance of artistic invention that is for, about, and against itself, and that illustrates why Cervantes stands, in the words of Robert Alter, "at the beginning of the Copernican revolution in the practice and theory of mimesis" (1975, 8). In particular, the "true history" provides no fewer than four versions of the scene depicting the battle between Don Quixote and the Basque from Biscay. In order of

Paradoxes of Imitation

175

appearance within the text, the first version of that battle between the protagonist and the Basque is the one left in suspense at the end of chapter 8, and seems to be the work of the narrator (DQ I: 8, 137). The second version is told in what seems to be the voice of the "second author" at the start of chapter 9, reminding the reader where the previous chapter broke off (DQ I: 9, 139). A third, pictorial version of the scene by an unnamed illustrator is said to appear on the frontispiece of the manuscript (DQ I: 9, 144). Last, a fourth version reportedly occurs at the very start of Cide Hamete's history (DQ I: 9, 145). In brief, the four versions of that battle scene, as related in the "true history," may be enumerated as follows:

1. 2. 3. 4.

the narrators version (written) the "second authors' version (written) the illustratorSversion (pictorial) Cide Hametesversion (written)

One question that arises here is whether we can plausibly identify any of these versions as an original or a model. If not, of what are these versions of the battle scene imitations or copies? And is it tenable to claim that any of these versions contains or frames one or more of the others? With these questions in mind, let us discuss each of the four versions and, therefore, join in Cervantes' textual game involving the limits and overlap between "literary verisimilitude" and "historical truth." On the one hand, the model or models for the narrator's version of the battle (1) may be found in one, two, or all three of the other versions-those of the second author, the illustrator, and Cide Hamete. This is so because the narrator may have possessed any of the following sources when he wrote his own version: the discovered manuscript (including the illustration); the translation of that manuscript; or the "second author's" account. On the other hand, the narrator's imitative version may also derive from a "model" in the text of the so-called author of this history. Indeed, the version of the narrator may derive from any combination of "models" to be found in any combination of oral or written sources, including such "new" sources as the "second author's" account, the translation, and the manuscript. A further difficulty arises in pinpointing the narrator's models, in that every unnamed source for the so-called author of this history is likely to contain its own description of the battle. With respect to one another, descriptions of the battle from sources both named and unnamed may thus act as imitations, models, or parallel versions. The narrator's version is therefore just as original and "true," or just as derivative and possibly "imaginary," as

176

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

any other version, aside from an imitation or imitations that we can identify as its single or composite model. But any point of reference we use to identify either a sequential or hierarchical order amid the whirl of voices, perspectives, and "imitations" within the narrator's version would represent an arbitrary critical choice. From a different perspective, one is led to similar conclusions about the untraceable genealogy of imitations, voices, and levels, in the version of the "second author" (2). Since the "second author" is unable to "speak" to us directly, both his version of the battle and his account of events from I, 9 onward occupy a level of narration beneath that of the narrator. So possible models for the "second author's" version of the battle would not include that of the narrator, but would include the version of the illustrator, or the version of Cide Hamete, or both. Regarding the second author's "old" sources, we never learn where he read about events that occur in the first eight chapters of the narrator's "true history." He may have read the work of the so-called "author of this history" or one of the latter's unnamed sources. Like the version of the narrator, then, that of the "second author" may simply parallel or imitate any combination of model descriptions that remain explicit or buried in that "second author's" old and new sources. Adding to our confusion, the "second author's version may be viewed as both parallel and subordinate to the version of the narrator. For, if the narrator wrote his version before obtaining the account of the "second author," the versions of both those characters could derive from the same model or models. Hence, if the version of the "second author" is not a model for the version of the narrator, then both would occupy the same level of imitation, sharing an equal degree of reliability (or its opposite), though occupying different levels of narration within the "true history." Let me violate sequential order to assess the last version of the battle to occur in a verbal medium (4), found at the beginning of the Arab manuscript. Because a popular prejudice in Cervantes' time held that Cide Hamete belonged to a race of liars, the manuscript itself can be seen as a contemporary variation on the paradox of the Liar from Crete, effectively telling us: "This history is false." Despite such popular bigotry, with which both the "second author" and Don Quixote agree, Cide Hamete's version is the only verbal "imitation" of the battle that can originate from direct observation of the "event." And yet, should we choose to believe in the originality of the manuscript, and so in the originality of Cide Hamete's version, we seem obliged to posit a missing fragment of that manuscript. As hinted earlier, it seems nothing short of miraculous that Cide Hamete should begin both his narrative and his observations of Don Quixote at the climax

Paradoxes of Imitation

177

of the battle between the protagonist and the Basque. But arguing in favor of the manuscript's integrity is the fact that it is said to include not only a picture of the battle, on what seems to be a frontispiece, but also a title page. How could such a missing fragment, which is missing that front matter, disappear from the rest of the manuscript without a trace? What might such a fragment contain? Is it the father and mother of all sources for the first eight chapters of the "true history?" Is the manuscript truly an eyewitness account, or is Cide Hamete concealing his sources? However we may choose to answer these questions will determine whether we consider the version by Cide Hamete a model, an imitation, or a parallel rendering of other versions of the same scene, to be found in sources both named and unnamed. As the text of the fiction reveals, once again, any such choice is arbitrary-grounded on our willingness to believe, or to suspend disbelief, in one or more of the narrative voices. The pictorial version by an unnamed illustrator (3), we are told, portrays the combatants and Sancho. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that the picture imitates "events" that the artist observed firsthand. It is also possible, if perhaps unlikely, that the picture is modeled either wholly or in part after a description found in one of the sources for the "history's" first eight chapters, including the possibly missing fragment. What seems most plausible in the context of the "true history" is that the illustrator based his rendition on the beginning pages of Cide Hamete's narrative. It certainly accords with convention to believe that the illustration is intended to accompany the Moorish historian's narrative. But the union between the picture and the manuscript turns out to be more doubtful than appears at first blush. Unlike the picture, the opening scene of the manuscript contains no reference to Sancho. More important, beneath each of the human figures in this picture, one finds an inscription in Spanish. One question that arises here is why an illustration, and its inscriptions, accompany a manuscript. But, more puzzling still, why should Spanish inscriptions appear on the frontispiece of an Arab manuscript? Though they seem to be part of the picture itself, and so the work of the illustrator, we never learn who wrote those inscriptions. No doubt they would be far more apt for a Spanish edition-indeed, a printed edition-of Cide Hamete's narrative. But if there were such an edition, it would mean that a translation of the manuscript, circulating in either published or unpublished form, appeared before the one commissioned by the "second author." Although there is no textual evidence for such a translation, it is important to note that the language in which those inscriptions appear (Spanish), as well as their content, suggest a host of possible models and sources for the picture on the frontispiece. If the illustrator's version is modeled directly after the version of Cide

178

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

Hamete, then this illustrator must have read the opening scene of the Arab manuscript. Otherwise his version derives only from hearsay. Yet in either case, we seem unable to explain why those inscriptions should aim at a different readership from that of the Arab history. Further, even allowing for artistic license, there are reasons to question whether the illustrator based his version on the manuscript at all. Two of the inscriptions are at issue with the reported contents of Cide Hamete's narrative. A first inscription, beneath the figure of the protagonist, identifies him as "Don Quixote." No discrepancy here. But under the figure of the Basque appears an inscription that reads: "Don Sancho de Azpetia."4 That name is never said, by any other voice, to occur in Cide Hamete's manuscript. Paying no mind to the apparent discrepancy berween the picture and the translation before him, the "second author" blithely comments that there can be "no doubt" (sin duda) that "Don Sancho de Azpetia" is the Basque's true name (DQ I: 9, 144). A third inscription, beneath the figure that the "second author" himself calls Sancho Panza (or Sancho Paunch), reads "Sancho Zancas" (or Sancho Bird-Legs). The "second author" finds the label entirely reasonable in view of Sancho's squat figure and thin shanks as portrayed in the picture, adding: "which must be what gave him the names Panza and Zancas, for he is called by both these names at different times in the history" (y por esto se Ie debi6 de poner nombre de Panza y de Zancas, que con estos dos sobrenombres Ie llama algunas veces la historia) (DQI: 9, 144). But, in fact, this is the only time that Sancho is called Zancas in the so-called "true history" (Alter 1975, 9). Thus the "second author" may be mistaken. Or perhaps he is suppressing part of the translation. Or perhaps the "second author," so eager to point out that Cide Hamete belongs to a race of liars, is himself lying. Further compromising his reliability as a transcriber of the translation, the "second author" openly tells us that he has omitted certain "trifles" (menudencias), since "[they] have no concern with the truthful relation of the history; for no history is bad so long as it is true" (no hacen al caso a la ver4. Another subtlety in this passage that leads us to query the reliability of the "history" we are said to be reading arises from the curious name of the Basque. A certifiably Basque surname, coinciding with the name of a Spanish town, would be spelled with an extra i: Azpeitia. The town bears the same name today as it did in Cervantes' time. Thus, the spelling in the inscription looks like a mistake rather than a plausible name for a Basque family or a Basque town. But whose mistake, if anyone's? Did some empirical person-author, printer---mit the i from the published fiction? Or is that curious spelling the empirical author's inventive simulation of a possible mistake by one of the fiction's "authors"? This is but one of many passages in the text that may be the result of either inventive genius or simple oversight. Here again, depending on one's mode of suspended disbelief, one will prefer to see either a careless or inventive author implicit in the text.

Paradoxes of Imitation

179

dadera relaci6n de la historia, que ninguna es mala como sea verdadera) (DQ I: 9, 144). Likewise, the credibility of the narrator is compromised here since he nowhere intervenes either to correct the "second author" or to say that he, the narrator, has no evidence of Sancho's alternative surname. Outside of the unreliable versions of the narrator and the "second author," the illustrator's rendition of the battle may thus derive from any number of verbal and visual models, to be found in any number of verbal and visual sources. Although all four versions appear related at first glance, their relation to one another or their possible models, within their possible sources, remains undecidable. Each one is an inventive imitation of an unknown model. In the end, the combined effect of those versions is an image of countless individuals imitating and transforming similar occurrences, or imitating and transforming snatches of one another's imitations-all within the fictional, textual equivalent of an echo chamber and a house of mirrors.

Hearing, and Believing, Voices A similar confusion besets us if we attempt to establish a tidy hierarchy of narrators in Don Quixote, or a fixed hierarchy of narrative levels within which to situate the fiction's various imitations, models, sources, or copies. s Any analysis of narrators and narrative voices must first reckon, I believe, with the narrative voice of the Prologue, which cannot be divorced from the rest of the "book." With this proviso in mind, let us examine the narrating personae who, according to the "true history," "exist" within the heterocosm. The narrator of the Prologue reportedly tells his friend that his, the narrator's, "historical" work is ready for publication. In essence, that narrator conveys the same information to us, claiming that he has "composed" both the "history" and the Prologue we are now reading. As the self-proclaimed "author" of the Prologue-that part of the "book" that was written last-he would have had to compose the final version of the "history." He is, therefore, the only "author" who has either direct or indirect access to all "sources" of the "history." As a result of 5. In the light of categories formulated by Genette (1980), James Parr has written the most recent attempt at providing a systematic hierarchization of narrative voices, and their varying degrees of reliability, within Cervantes' Don Quixote (1988, 3-20). For other important studies on narrative voices in the text, see George Haley; "The Narrator in Don Quijote: Maese Pedro's Puppet Show" (1964); the same author's "The Narrator in Don Quijote: A Discarded Voice" (1984); Colbert Nepaulsingh's "La aventura de los narradores del Quijoti' (1980); Thomas Lathrop's "Who is the Narrator in Don Quijott?" (1988); and Mauricio Molho's "Instancias narradoras en Don Quijoti' (1989).

180

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

his unique position, we may infer that the narrator of Prologue is also the narrator of the subsequent narrative, who intervenes in his own voice at the close of I, 8. His function, then, is less that of an "author" than an editor. Hence James Parr's apt designation of that character as an "editor persona" (1988, 10). Moreover, to borrow again from Parr, neither the narrator (Parr's "editor persona") nor any other compiler can be seen a genuine "author," unless one uses that term according to one acceptation prevalent in seventeenth-century Spain: namely, an "autor de comedias," which denoted either a "stage manager" or a "producer" of theatrical performances (1988, 12). In any case, all other narrative voices within the "history" occupy a level of narration somewhere beneath that of the narrator. For the first eight chapters of Part I, the other narrative voices-about which we remain unenlightened until the intervention of the narrator-explicitly include those of the "author of this history" and the latter's unnamed source or sources. From I, 9 onward, the narrator's final version of the "history" is shown to encompass three other narrative voices and their corresponding texts: the "second author," whose account encompasses the translation by the bilingual Moor, in turn encompassing the discovered manuscript attributed to Cide Hamete. But, as already discussed, the narrator remains unhelpful about his sources for either the first eight chapters or the rest of the narrative. Furthermore, concerning that narrator's reliability, nothing in the Prologue inspires confidence in either his competence or his honesty as a historian. Similarly, excepting the "author of this history," we have specific reasons to doubt the reliability of the "history's" other known mediators and narrators. Beginning with I, 9, the narrator appears to concede the role of principal narrative voice in the "history" to the "second author," who relays the contents of the translation from I, 9 to the very end of Part II. In a passage that parodies common opinion about the "truth" of historical narratives, the author has that "second author," presumably as quoted by the narrator, display subjective bias by passionately criticizing the lack of dispassionate objectivity in Cide Hamete's narrative: [Wjhen [Cide Hametej could and should let his pen flow in praise of such a good knight, it seems that he passes over such praise in silence: a bad thing to do and even a worse thing to intend, since historians are obliged and compelled to be accurate, truthful and completely dispassionate, and since no amount of self-interest, fear, resentment or sympathy should lead them to stray from the path of truth, whose mother is history, portrait of the times, repository of deeds, witness to the past, example and warning in the present, and portent of the future.

Paradoxes of Imitation

181

([C]uando [Cide Hamete] pudiera y debiera estender la pluma en las alabanzas de tan buen caballero, parece que de industria las pasa en silencio; cosa mal hecha y peor pensada, habiendo y debiendo ser los historiadores puntuales, verdaderos y no nada apasionados, y que ni el interes ni el miedo, el rancor ni la afici6n, no les hagan torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, emula del tiempo, dep6sito de las acciones, testigo de 10 pasado, ejemplo y aviso de 10 presente, advertencia de 10 por venir.) (DQ I: 9, 144-45; emphasis added) Unaware of how the bombast of his own statement undercuts his criteria for historical credibility, the "second author" seems just as naive and unreliable as the narrator. Once again, the irony of the author is evident through the overstated naIvete of his character. More important, however, this passage of the narrative dramatizes and parodies the inseparable bond between "facts" and their interpretation, "events," and ideology-in anachronistic terms-or "events" and the fictive categories by which we "know" them. In the less anachronistic terms of Aristotle's Poetics, we may claim that here, as elsewhere in the narrative, Cervantes dramatizes the inseparable bond between "historical" and "poetic" truth. In other words, like other narrators and mediators, and like other characters, including the protagonist himself, the "second author" arranges, suppresses, or accommodates the presumed factuality of "events" about the "good knight" according to the categories that govern his discourse, or his opinion regarding their ultimate meaning and purpose. The underlying ideology or philosophia of the "second author," like that of, say, the narrator or the protagonist himself, is shown to be an egregious case of naive and one-sided thinking. In particular, the "second author" fails to see the protagonist as a paradoxical blend of wisdom and folly, madness and sanity, or laudable and reproachable traits. Indeed, the "second author" seems to accept the protagonist on the latter's own, transparently lunatic terms. Even in less egregious cases, however, a character's "ideology" or "poetic truth" is shown eventually to bog down in antinomy and to lead him or her to suppress certain "facts," or to pass over multiple meanings inherent in those facts. It is because almost every "ideology" or "poetic truth" presented in the narrative is shown to be wanting rather than complete that, in my view, it would require a naive form of critical bias to construe such passages in Cervantes' work as dramatized arguments in favor of moral or epistemological relativism. Each form of poetic truth is shown to be both futile and necessary, both revealing and concealing the meaning or "truth" of events. What is more, even such a lunatic form of poetic truth as that of the protagonist is shown to contain "truths" that

182

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

remain either hidden or suppressed in other, "saner" ideologies or discursive systems. The "meaning" of events is thus shown to be infinite, unstable, and subject to enlargement or reformulation over time. To demonstrate, through the deft use of paradoxy, that fictive categories belonging to every particular form of poetic truth hamper one's ability to see many sides of a question is hardly the same as a dogmatic skepticism-a conspicuously limited form of poetic "truth" that asserts that all extreme positions are equally valid and, thus, equally meaningless. 6 If all forms of poetic truth are wanting, it does not follow that they are all wanting in the same way or to the same degree. It is one thing to dramatize, as the author of Don Quixote does through his narrating voices, that fixed and finite categories will continually fail to shed light on the infinite, changing complexity of even the simplest human actions and events; that the mystery of even minuscule "truths" exceeds the categories and schemata of logic and language; that there can never be an utterly reliable or final version of historical events. It is quite another to hold, with apodictic certainty, that all categories are pointless, since there is nothing to shed light on and no such thing as shedding light. In other words, if Cervantes can enlist a playful rhetoric of paradoxy to send up the shortcomings of his characters' logical and linguistic categories, it is because those shortcomings can be recognized as such. He therefore avoids the absurd, "absolutist" posture of a skeptic zealot, or of a solipsist determined to proselytize. 7 Although more a mediator than a narrator, the Moorish translator also seems to espouse a personal form of poetic truth whereby he judges the relevance or importance of certain facts relating to the "history" of Don Quixote and Sancho. That form of poetic truth, or the translator's unstated assumptions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of the protagonist's exploits, leads him to disregard the "second author's" charge neither to add to nor subtract from the contents of Cide Hamete's manuscript. In such cases, the author dramatizes that 6. On Cervantes' philosophical attitude of what one may call moderate skepticism, see Maureen Ihre's Skepticism in Cervantes (1982). For an excellent discussion concerning the influence on Renaissance authors of Cicero's popularization of skepticism in Academica, see Kinney 1989, 320-23. 7. The thesis of Cervantes as an epistemological relativist was first put forth, in its most unequivocal fashion, by Americo Castro in El pensamiento de Cervantes (1972). This view was already latent, however, in Jose Ortega y Gasset's Meditaciones del Quijote ([1914] 1984). Playing off Ortega's famous assessment of Don Quixote as an "equivocation" (equlvoco), Angel del Rio puts forth a similar view of Cervantes and his fiction in "El equlvoco del Quijoti' (1959). Early efforts to refute Castro's view include Alexander A. Parker's "El concepto de la verdad en el Quijoti' (1948) and Richard Predmore's "El problema de la realidad en el Quijoti' (1953). Most contemporary critics have adopted a more moderate, if similar, opinion of Cervantes' epistemological posture, deriving from the "perspectivism" of two important studies by Leo Spitzer (1955, 1962). For a rigorous, highly critical summary of this strain in Cervantes scholarship, see Anthony Close's The Romantic Approach to ''Don Quixote" (1978, 212-42). Ciriaco Moron Arroyo links Cervantes' philosophical and theological opinions to those of his period (1976, 95-159).

Paradoxes of Imitation

183

not only the importance, but also the intelligibility, of "facts" that belong to the "history" depend on a vision of poetic truth that patterns them into a purposeful, meaningful whole. What emerges repeatedly from the text is that there is no such thing as a purely factual account, divorced from the context of a mediating voice, a particular perspective, or a personal form of poetic truth or ideological bias. Probably the most conspicuous example of how the translator's poetic truth leads him to tamper with the Arab manuscript occurs when that translator is reported (by either the narrator or the "second author" or both) voluntarily to omit Cide Hamete's description of Don Diego de Miranda's mansion: Here the author [Cide Hamete?] depicts all the details about Don Diego's house, including those details about what the house of a wealthy, rural hidalgo contains; but the translator of this history preferred to pass over these and other similar trifles in silence, because they ill accorded with the main purpose of the history, which finds greater strength in its truth than in its cold digressions. (Aqui pinta el autor [~Cide Hamete?] todas las circunstancias de la casa de don Diego, pinrandonos en elIas 10 que contiene una casa de un caballero labrador y rico; pero al traductor desta historia Ie pareci6 pasar estas y otras semejantes menudencias en silencio, porque no venian bien con el prop6sito principal de la historia; la cual mas tiene su fuerza en la verdad que en las frias digresiones.) (DQII: 18, 169; emphasis added)

It would seem that "the truth," a phrase that recurs so frequently and variously throughout the "true history," here refers to "poetic" rather than factual or "historical" truth. It is poetic truth that determines the translator's understanding of the "history's" main purpose. Accordingly, "cold digressions" would amount to descriptions of factual details that the translator feels would only detract from the "history's" lofty "truth" and "purpose." Thus the reliability of the translator as one who "faithfully" renders the discovered manuscript into Spanish is, of course, open to reasonable doubt. We are led to believe that the translator omits the description in the manuscript because Don Diego's homestead is so generic that knowledge of its features would add nothing to our understanding about the unique meaning and purpose of Don Quixote's adventures. Interestingly, too, by stating the presumed reasons behind the translator's omission, the passage has a similar effect on the reader as a detailed description of the mansion. Before casting judgment on the translator, however, we do well to bear in mind that we know about the translator's conception of poetic truth, and about his alleged reasons for suppressing the "trifles" in this segment of Cide Hamete's

184

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

narrative-if that is what he did-only through the mediation of either one or two unreliable characters: the narrator and he "second author." Indeed, we have no way of discerning which of the words and judgments set forth in that passage belong to the translator or to some other voice. To whom and by what means did the translator convey his reasons for omitting Cide Hamete's description? Is it not possible that what we read in this passage is nothing but an unreliable narrator's conjecture, or biased paraphrase, about the translator's alleged reasons for allegedly omitting that segment? If the translator passes over Cide Hamete's description "in silence," the character in whose "voice" this passage is relayed would need to have access to the manuscript. To verify the "silence," he would have to know enough Arabic to understand the relevant segment of the manuscript. The narrator seems more likely to meet both requirements than does the "second author," who hires the translator and appears to know no other language than Spanish. As a result, we may infer that the narrator enjoys direct access to archival documents, hearsay, the account of the "second author," and Cide Hamete's manuscript. Yet as far as I know, there is no passage in the "history" that specifically indicates whether he has access to the translation, except through the account of the "second author." Hence unless the narrator spoke with the translator, or read some unmentioned notes written by the translator in the account of the "second author"-suppositions for which there is no textual evidence-the narrator's representation of that translator's reasons for omitting a segment of the manuscript is at best the result of conjecture, here presented as yet another "truth." At all events, it is therefore likely that in this passage, we confront a narrator of dubious reliability, representing the dubious reliability of the translator, whose alleged omissions and ideological motivations are refracted through that narrator's own omissions and ideology.

Cide Hamete: Not a Liar but a "Lie" Among all the "history's" other known mediators and narrators, Cide Hamete doubtless presents the most puzzling case. Notwithstanding the popular prejudice of Cervantes' day, the Arab historian's race is never put forth in the narrative as sufficient reason for doubting his veracity. The racist view that "all Arabs are liars" is first attributed to the "second author," who expresses that opinion shortly after he tells us about his hiring a "bilingual Moor" (morisco aljimiado) to translate the discovered manuscript (DQI: 9, 142). Furthermore, the "second

Paradoxes of Imitation

185

author's" complaint about the historian's race comes only as a result of Cide Hamete's failure to extol the protagonist's nobility. The same racist view is shared by Don Quixote. But the protagonist seems to become entrenched in that view only after the he learns that the Arab's "history" is not the epic that he, Don Quixote, had hoped for.s In both cases, then, the racist argument against Cide Hamete comes as an afterthought-an excuse, in fact-that follows from an ideological bias. Indeed, the reader who would disbelieve Cide Hamete strictly on racial grounds is thus shown to employ the same criteria for judgment as the simpleminded or perhaps even the insane. By contrast, the best and most obvious reason for doubting Cide Hamete's veracity arises from his implicit claim to Godlike powers, especially that of omniscience. The most self-referential, and paradoxical, case in point of such alleged powers-and of one's reasons for calling those powers into questionoccurs in what is supposed to be a private conversation between the knight and the squire, presumably recorded (and overheard?) by the Arab historian himself That conversation not only concerns the first volume of Cide Hamete's "history," about which Sancho has just learned from Sans6n Carrasco. It also concerns nothing other than Cide Hamete's supernatural knowledge. In the following passage, where that private conversation is presumably recorded by the Arab historian, and passed on to us through the threefold mediation of the translator, the "second author" and the narrator, both the protagonist and Sancho seem fully to accept Cide Hamete's magical, supernatural knowledge regarding their private exchanges: [Sancho]: [And Sans6n] says that they mention me in [the history] with my own name of Sancho Panza, and the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, with other things which we did when we were alone, so that I signed myself with the cross, terrified to think how that historian could have known the things he wrote about. [Don Quixote]: I assure you, Sancho, said Don Quixote, that the author of our history must be some sage enchanter, and to those [historians] nothing which they desire to write about remains concealed from them. ([Sancho]: [Y] dice [Sans6n] que me mientan a m! en ella [la historia] con mi mesmo nombre de Sancho Panza [no mention of "Zancas"], y a la senora Dulcinea del Toboso, con otras cosas que pasamos nosotros a solas, que me hice cruces de espantado c6mo las pudo saber el historiador que las escribi6. 8. On "Don Quixote's alienation from his book," see the chapter by that name in Weiger 1988, 100-137.

186

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

[Don Quijotel: Yo te aseguro, Sancho---dijo don Quijote-, que debe de ser algun sabio encantador el autor de nuestra historia; que a los tales no se les encubre nada de 10 que quieren escribir.) (DQII: 2, 57; emphasis added) Oddly, neither Don Quixote nor Sancho seems perturbed by the possibility that Cide Hamete may be listening to them at the vety moment of this alleged conversation. Nor are they said to search for him anywhere during the course of the narrative. No doubt the Arab historian's uncanny ability to eavesdrop on private conversations is, of itself, no sign of omniscience. But nothing short of omniscience would allow him to know not only the content of private conversations, but also the content of private thoughts, frequently recorded in the "history." Yet it is worth noting that Cide Hamete seems to enjoy no monopoly on omniscience. For the private thoughts of the protagonist are also presented as empirical facts in the first eight chapters of the narrator's "history," said to derive from the work of the "author of this history," and thus falling outside the scope of Cide Hamete's discovered manuscript. One need only recall the scene in which Don Quixote, riding alone across the plains of Montiel, conjures up the image, in accord with his own idea of poetic truth, of none other than the sage author who will write his history (DQ I: 2, 80). Nonetheless, a logical paradox emerges from the above quoted "conversation" between the protagonist and his squire. This passage calls our attention to the issue of Cide Hamete's fantastic status, not simply as an illusionist, but as a magus, wizard, or "sage enchanter." Such assessments move us to doubt the credibility of that Arab "historian's" narrative and, next, to doubt the "actuality" of the recorded "conversation" we are reading. To believe the content of that passage in the "history" leads us to disbelieve it. In the same vein, the passage also contains what we may regard as a slip of the pen on the part of Cide Hamete, as he allegedly records what we may regard as Don Quixote's slip of the tongue: "and to those historians nothing that they desire to write about remains concealed from them" (que a los tales no se les encubre nada de 10 que quieren escribir). In other words, such "enchanted" authors, referred to in what may function as the pejorative terms "los tales," or "those historians," write or invent as they please. Hence this passage that presumably occurs in the discovered manuscript undermines, even as it affirms, the Arab historian's credibility and supernatural powers. Moreover, unless we accept Cide Hamete as an "enchanter" or a magus, endowed with superhuman powers-unless we forsake verisimilitude and accept the "truth" or "reality" of fantasy, in other words-we must acknowledge that much or all of his "historical" narrative is the result of his or some other character's "fiction."

Paradoxes of Imitation

187

If, bracketing the issue of Cide Hamete's omniscience, we focus solely on his ability to eavesdrop on private conversations, including the one just quoted, the Arab historian's account is credible only if we are prepared to grant him Godlike powers akin to ubiquity and invisibility. For instance, the conversation just quoted, in which Sancho informs his master about the recently published history of their adventures in Part I, occurs in our protagonist's private chamber. To overhear that conversation, Cide Hamete would not only have to escape the notice of the knight and his squire, but, what strikes this reader as even more unlikely, he would also have to get past the hidalgo's formidable housekeeper, who tried to deny entry to Sancho. That the Arab historian should remain undiscovered by all the characters appearing in his history, in this chapter and others, defies credibility. If he is ever discovered, there is no record of such an occurrence in his manuscript, which would amount to either a glaring omission or an instance of falsification in his "historical" narrative. Concerning his possible ubiquity, Cide Hamete's purportedly eyewitness account often includes diverse events occurring simultaneously in different places. For instance, between II, 45 and 11,55, Cide Hamete observes what happens to Sancho as governor of Barataria and what happens to Don Quixote, at the same time, in the ducal palace. Furthermore, the Arab historian seems to join powers of omniscience, invisibility, and ubiquity in his narration of events (including private thoughts and conversations) that conclude with the fortuitous mock rescue by Don Quixote of Sancho from a pit into which the ex-governor had fallen and where he had wandered throughout the night (DQII: 55). Nonetheless, the veracity of Cide Hamete obviously becomes a moot point when we consider reasons that lead us to doubt his very "existence" within the heterocosm. 9 More specifically, if the foregoing reasons lead us to suspect that much of the history about Don Quixote and Sancho is the invention of Cide Hamete, we are finally led to suspect that the part of the "history" concerning Cide Hamete, the manuscript, the translation, and the translator may be part 9. To date, critics writing about the aesthetic purpose and function of Cide Hamete have generally considered him not only a character or voice within the heterocosm, but also the main narrator. The most recent study to hold such a position toward the Arab historian is Mancing 1981, 63-81. In his Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (1988), James Parr rhetorically asks: "Does anyone believe, really and truly; that there exists such a document [as Cide Hamete's manuscript]' even within the world of the book?" (22). Yet Parr continues to view the Arab historian as a "character" and a "presence" in the story (1988, 30-31). These elegant and informative studies notwithstanding, I shall presently discuss my reasons for denying Cide Hamete's existence as a character and for considering his presence limited to that of a subordinate narrative voice attached to a Moorish name. For an influential analysis of Cide Hamete's role in reference to Cervantes' narrative technique, see Ruth El Saffar's "The Function of the Fictional Narrator in Don Quixote"(1968).

188

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

of an invention produced by a character who occupies a "higher" narrative level in the "history" than Cide Hamete: namely, either the "second author" or the narrator. AI> is evident from the tales of Ricote and Ana Felix, the fictional Spain of Part II imitates the historical Spain of 1609 in that its Moriscos, too, suffer the cruelty of forced exile. In that light alone, there is nothing verisimilar about the character of an Arab chronicler, unless he truly "is" a sage enchanter, who would risk his life, traveling about the country, in order to write his history about a local madman. Furthermore, in his first conversation with both Don Quixote and Sancho, Sans6n Carrasco reportedly tells them that Cide Hamete's history includes "the adventure of the windmills" (la aventura de los molinos de viento) (DQ II: 3, 60). But this adventure occurs before the protagonist's battle with the Basque from Biscay and, thus, before the opening episode of the discovered manuscript that we learn about from the "second author" and the narrator in I, 9. Adding to the obvious discrepancy, this conversation between Sans6n, the knight, and the squire about Cide Hamete's history is presumably recorded by the Arab historian himself. Last, in Part I of the narrator's "true history," the manuscript is said to bear the title History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, Written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arab Historian (Historia de don Quijote de la Mancha, esrita por Cide Hamete Benengeli, historiador ardbigo) (DQ I: 9, 143). Yet according to what Sancho is said to report to Don Quixote, Cide Hamete's history is titled The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de fa Mancha) (DQ II: 2, 57), thus echoing the truly duplicitous title that the book by the actual author, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, shares with the (imaginary) "book" by the narrator, in turn made to share the name of the actual author. From the foregoing discussion, it seems that the fiction's twofold game of literary verisimilitude and historical truth invites us to find it plausible that, either wholly or in part, those sections of the "history" relating to the existence of Cide Hamete, the discovered manuscript, the translation, the translator, and even the "second author" represent the invention of the narrator. In the first place, it seems clear that accepting the account of the manuscript's discovery by the "second author" in I, 9 would entail rejecting the title that Sancho is said to communicate to his master after learning it from Sans6n Carrasco. Indeed, accepting the account of the manuscript's discovery would lead us to the absurd inference that, particularly through the assertions ascribed to Sancho and Sans6n, Cide Hamete misrepresents both the content and title of his own narrative. In the second place, should we reject all or part of the account regarding the manuscript's presumed discovery, we clearly would have little reason to accept subse-

Paradoxes of Imitation

189

quent accounts, attributed to the "second author" and the narrator, of what that manuscript contains. At the very least, discrepancies concerning the manuscript, its author, and its contents all point toward the possibility of tampering or misrepresentation on the part of either the "second author" or the narrator. What leads me specifically to view the narrator as an "inventor" in this regard-either wholly or in part-is that the title belonging to the published version of his "history" coincides with the second title given for Cide Hamete's manuscript. It seems that, true to form, the narrator unwittingly alerts readers to his subterfuge by conferring the title of his own "history" upon the "manuscript" of the "nonexistent" Cide Hamete. No other "author" in the "history" could even know about that title, much less invent it, since it belongs to the narrator's final version. By inventing an "Arab" manuscript and its author, the narrator is, of course, employing a favorite device of both fraudulent historians and chivalric authors who wish bestow credibility and authority upon their narratives. 10 That the invention should here achieve the opposite effect is, surely, part of the author's dual parody of both chivalric romances and spurious "histories." In short, I would suggest that the "character" of Cide Hamete is meant to be seen as an impossibility, or wholly the invention of the narrator. Indeed, Cide Hamete is at once the lie and the fiction of the fictional narrator. Within the heterocosm, the material associated with the "manuscript" may derive from some other "source," or other "sources," used by the narrator. Or, what appears less likely-but who knows?-it may be nothing but his invention. Similarly, the "second author" may represent a character or a voice, whose words are either misrepresented or, what also seems unlikely or inverisimilar, wholly invented. In any case, what is important to stress is that the two inseparable aspects of the "history" about Don Quixote thus become either total or partial inventions of the narrator: the first aspect of the "history" being the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho (presented as Cide Hamete's eyewitness account, in manuscript); the second, the accounts of the "true history's" compilation and "sources." More specifically, the second aspect of the narrator's "true history"-that is, its compilation-includes the story about the manuscript, its presumed translation, the translator, as well as the "second author" and the latter's accounts concerning the discovery and contents of the manuscript. Any attempt to determine precisely how much of the "history" derives from "reliable" sources would doubtless amount to idle speculation, and solemnly miss the point of the author's elaborate, fictional parody of narrative and historical 10. Wardropper (1965) provides a fine discussion, with examples, of how some Renaissance and Baroque writers in Spain mendaciously claimed to base their fraudulent histories on manuscripts by Arab historians.

190

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

reliability. Again, it seems that Cervantes' text invites us to play rather than dismiss a game called literary verisimilitude and historical truth. But it does not therefore invite us to believe that we can discover what "really happens" to Don Quixote and other characters within the heterocosm or what "really happens" to the "true history" in the course of its compilation. In any case, despite their possibly varying degrees of "imaginariness," Cide Hamete, the "second author," and the translator each represents a perspective and a narrative voice that form an integral part of the narrator's "history." In a sense, of course, it is the charge of "discreet readers" to determine whatever validity pertains to each perspective and narrative voice, including those of the narrator, in reference to the "history's" meaning, purpose, or "truth." In favoring the reliability of one perspective or narrator over another; in thinking that they must definitively favor any perspective or narrator at all; in thinking that they have successfully isolated a particular perspective or narrative voice in a given passage; or, perhaps, in refusing or failing to do any of these things, such readers may reveal (chiefly to themselves) their own critical powers and their own form of "poetic truth." However they negotiate these riddles, they will inscribe themselves into the text as its unique readers, translators, compositors, or second authors. Ultimately, however, Cervantes' parodic fiction about the fraudulent "history" of the narrator (also named Cervantes?) seems to contain a broader, more self-conscious aim than that of offering a variety of ironclad ideologies or versions of poetic truth from which the reader is invited to choose either one or none. Instead, the author causes those many versions of historical and poetic "truth" to interact and to engage in a continuing dialogue. In doing so, he seems to invite the discriminating reader to accept both all and none of the rival versions of the protagonist's adventures; both all and none of the possible stories concerning the "history's" compilation. In other words, the author reveals that readers must place at least some trust in the narrator's assertions and suspend disbelief about what they read in the "history" for there to be a tale at all. To continue reading or to accept anything as "true" or "verisimilar" within the "true history" about Don Quixote and Sancho hangs on our accepting the mendacious fantasy named Cide Hamete: magus, wizard, "sage enchanter." This assertion holds, in particular, for Part II, where the majority of characters are shown to act on what they read or know by hearsay, not about the narrator's "true history," but Part I of the verifiably exact (puntuaf) "history" by Cide Hamete, or Cervantes' Moorish analogue of the Liar from Crete. Yet readers are simultaneously invited truly to believe and trust in nothing of what they read. Hence the fiction serves to dramatize how, in reading, critically, both stories and histories, the reader must suspend both belief and disbelief. But more self-

Paradoxes of Imitation

191

consciously, it dramatizes how "this narrative" (and by extension every narrative) is in large part of the readers' own making: a product of what they are prepared to believe and so of what they are prepared to piece together, discover, and inventor "compose" (componer)-from the stimulus of the text. Through his fiction's continuing interplay (now conflictive, now harmonious) of myriad "sources," "imitations," "models," perspectives, voices, and versions of poetic truth, the author of the fiction obliges each perspective and ideology to reveal the "truth" of its own limitations. He therefore dramatizes and suggests "truths" that remain invisible to those who would adopt such perspectives or ideologies. Don Quixote's dialogic play on a multiplicity of perspectives, versions, and interpretations of "events"-relating especially to the protagonist and his presumed exploits-thus represents a practical demonstration of such venerable, ontological, and cosmological paradoxes as the one beneath the many and the dynamic mingling of nonexclusive contraries (coincidentia oppositorum) in a continuing state of harmonious tension (discordia concors). In isolation, every definitive "version" of historical and poetic truth in Don Quixote seems to contain a limiting bias that prevents its revealing more than a fragment of "the whole story." Indeed, pretensions to conveying anything akin to a "whole story" become the chief object of the author's parody. Through its dialogic play of limited, varied perspectives, Don Quixote gives an unfolding, narrative intelligibility to the complexities, paradoxes, and antinomies involved in the fully discursive process of both discovering and adding to (i.e., "inventing" in the root sense of in venire, "to invent" and "to discover") the meaning, purpose, or "truth" of knowledge and history. For in light of a core paradox concerning the overlap between art and nature, as broached in the Prologue of 1605, one perceives related paradoxes concerning the mutual dependence of what received opinion holds to be contrary categories of literature and life, history and poetry, or historical and poetic truth. Cervantes bodies forth the latent paradox in Aristotle's definition of art as an imitation of nature in order to create an intricate parody of how human beings, in a manner analogous to that of narrators and other characters within the heterocosm, transform and make sense of their world. The narrative dramatizes how, through the "art" of their discourse, or their fictive categories of thought and expression, human beings order and frame their experience, investing it and themselves with intelligibility, meaning, purpose, or "truth." By forcefully dramatizing an interaction between competing varieties of poetic truth, Don Quixote also represents a parody of how every variety of ideological entrenchment blinds its devotees to philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical mysteries. Such mysteries continue to unfold in changing forms over time and ulti-

192

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

mately remain beyond the grasp of definitive formulations, or logical and linguistic categories. Thus, from the start of his Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I, Cervantes draws on a central paradox that he discovers at the heart of Aristotle's Poetics. From this he creates his own paradox of poetic "history" that is not only too illustrative of discourse and human action, but also too funny, not to be taken seriously. 11

11. In a justly famous essay titled "Don Quixote as a Funny Book" (1969), Russell argues against the tendency of the German Romantics and their contemporary sympathizers to search for hidden profundities in Cervantes' best-known fiction, since its first readers rightly understood that text to offer a comical rather than serious work. Expanding considerably on Russell's thesis, though without excluding some seriousness of ethical purpose on the part of Cervantes, Close (1978) engages in a trenchant, scholarly polemic that traces the genealogy and later metamorphoses of the "Romantic" tendency in criticism on Don Quixote.

"1 Know Who 1 Am" Don Quixote de la Mancha, Don Diego de Miranda, and the Paradox of Self Knowledge

Know, Fashion, and Conquer Thyself In Cervantes' Don Quixote, the question of self-knowledge is far from an incidental issue. Indeed, it is hardly surprising that a work that repeatedly takes the measure of its own identity, artifice, and ontological status should include a cast of characters who are wrestling, or failing to wrestle, with the challenge expressed in the delphic and Socratic maxim Know thyself But in keeping with the practical orientation of such predecessors as Petrarch and Guevara, who address the same problem of psychological paradox, Cervantes' characters are wrestling with the imperative not only to know themselves, but also to act on that knowledge: to create and fashion a social, moral, or religious persona. Beginning with the protagonist and his squire, the problem of self-knowledge (or self-deception) and self-fashioning assumes a prominent place in virtually all the fiction's characters.

194

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

These characters embody what contemporary criticism often calls a host of differing "perspectives," in that they shape their "lives," with varying degrees of inventio, after an array of literary or quasi-literary "codes," models, and versions of poetic truth. Cervantes foregrounds the process of self-knowledge and self-fashioning in chapters 16-18 of Part II, in which he narrates Don Quixote's four-day encounter with Don Diego de Miranda, whom the protagonist reportedly calls the Knight of the Green Cloak (el Caballero del Verde Gaban).! In this chapter, I shall devote the bulk of my discussion to the encounter between the protagonist and Don Diego primarily because I believe that it encapsulates the governing, paradoxical logic of action in Don Quixote, especially in Part II. Indeed, Cervantes' characters act according to their knowledge or ignorance of who they are or how they appear to others and according to the relatively wise or foolish models and codes to which they give their allegiance. In illustrating this point, it will prove helpful to glance briefly at how the problem of self-knowledge develops in the fiction's two principal characters. At first, it seems that Sancho offers the most straightforward example in Don Quixote of a character's achieving and acting on his self-knowledge. In II, 53, this peasant turned squire decides to abandon his governorship, which was hitherto the object of his fantasies or delusions of grandeur, as well as the primary reason that he joined and often believed in the veracity and legitimacy of his master's enterprise. No doubt one detects a certain humility and a considerable degree of self-acceptance in remarks like the following: "I was not born to be a governor, nor to defend isles or cities from enemies who choose to besiege them" (Yo no nad para ser gobernador, ni para defender insulas ni ciudades de los enemigos que quisieren acometerlas) (DQ II: 53, 444). But it is doubtful that Sancho represents anything so simple as an exemplum of the Socratic ideal. As 1. It is worth noting that Don Quixote is never quoted as using this sobriquet for Don Diego. Rather, it is the narrator who claims, without direct quotation, that Don Quixote accorded Don Diego such a knightly epithet. At the start of their encounter, the protagonist addresses the rural hidalgo as "Gallant sir" (Senor galan). A loaded term in this context, gaUin most often denotes a stock character in drama: a "gallant," young lover. Later, he addresses him as either "Don Diego" or, pejoratively, as "mister hidalgo" (senor hidalgo). Furthermore, there is no mention of when, and in what circumstances, Don Quixote purportedly used this title to refer to Don Diego. Indeed, the narrator (apparently "speaking" in the voice of Cide Hamete) seems wrongly to assume that Don Quixote must have incorporated Don Diego into his chivalric world and viewed that secondary character as a fellow "knight," whose home is called a "castle" (castillo 0 casal, again by the narrator, in the heading of chapter 18, Part II. As I shall discuss in this chapter, despite these false clues from the narrator, the passages about the encounter between the two hidalgos reveal that afrer scrutinizing Don Diego and listening attentively to his opening remarks, Don Quixote considers Don Diego to follow a very different "profession" from his own, one that the protagonist fails to specifY-probably because the profession of a "more than moderately wealthy," rural hidalgo falls outside his chivalric schemata.

"I Know Who 1 Am"

195

suggested even in the words just quoted, his chief motivation for leaving Barataria is that the diet, dangers, and material rewards of that position ran contrary to his dreams. Moreover, despite their seeming humility, his remarks sound a clear note of self-importance. So here, as elsewhere in the fiction, Sancho's self-awareness remains limited and involves something less than a radical transformation. 2 Of course the problem of self-knowledge and self-delusion pervades the author's characterization of his protagonist. In Don Quixote, we confront the representation of an individual engaged in a desperate, paradoxical attempt both to forge and preserve his identity. The forging of that identity begins with a fit of lunatic self-delusion, at the start of Part I, when the "ingenious" hidalgo transmutes his social persona, his "nag" (rodn) and his memory of a local peasant woman, respectively, into the knight-errant Don Quixote, the steed Rocinante, and the princess Dulcinea, "lady of his thoughts" (senora de sus pensamientos) (DQ I: 1, 78). The protagonist does so in full accord with the code, or what Dunn calls the "semiotic system," of chivalric fiction, which our hero takes to be history (1982, 19-20). That forging continues beyond the knight's mock dubbing at the inn, and even beyond his defeat at the hands of the merchants from Toledo at the end of his first sally from home. However, it is important to bear in mind that it is the reader alone, and not the protagonist, who can acknowledge that the identity of Don Quixote is in the process o/being forged. In the protagonist's mythical conception of reality, and of himself, knightly heroes remain changeless, archetypal figures, with identities forged from time immemorial. Hence Don Quixote's irate response to his kindly neighbor Pedro Alonso: "I know who I am" (Yo se quien soy) (DQ I: 5, 106).3 These words echo nothing less grandiose than God's own tautological act of selfnaming to Moses from the burning bush, expressing the deity's absolute subjectivity and eternal self-sufficiency: "I am who am" (Exod. 3:14). What the protagonist seeks, in Godlike fashion, is an immutable, self-conferred identity that emanates from an originary act of self-definition and self-naming. He expects that his quasi-divine act will translate, as from a divine logos, into a temporal 2. Likewise, 1 do not see the same degree of "quijotizacion" in Sancho as Madariaga (1978, 137-45). 3. The Spanish phrase "Soy quien soy" (I am who 1 am) provides the subject and title of an illuminating philological study by Leo Spitzer (1947) that does not concern, and does not cite, the above passage in Don Quixote. AB Spitzer points out, Spaniards in the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries most commonly uttered this phrase to express their firm sense of identity---one might even say, despite the anachronism, their self-image---especially as regards their social station, their socioeconomic status, and their implicitly honorable family heritage (1947, 113). Spitzer holds that this phrase sometimes recalls but does not derive from the utterance that God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, in Exodus 3: 14 (Spitzer 1947, 113-21). My contention here is only that Cervantes' use of a similar phrase in Don Quixote alludes to the famous quotation in Exodus.

196

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

unfolding of heroic deeds that are generative of lasting renown, or "eternal fame and glory." But the words that our protagonist speaks immediately thereafter, "and I know that I can be not only those I have just named, but also the Twelve Peers of France and even the Nine Worthies" (y se que puedo ser no s6lo los que he dicho, sino todos los doce Pares de Francia, yaun todos los nueve de la Fama) (DQ I: 5, 106) suggest that his identity is still in potentia and has yet to find its definitive shape. Though he is clearly unable to acknowledge it, Don Quixote has little more than a name and a vaguely defined profession. He is still very much involved in a process of forging a "timeless" identity that unfolds in the narrative, even more paradoxically, as the protagonist's frantic search for an exemplary model. A crucial phase of Don Quixote's search for his identity occurs near the middle of Part I, in the wild uplands of Sierra Morena. There, he squanders an opportunity for self-knowledge, as against self-definition, when he encounters the figure of Cardenio. Indeed, rather than seeing any mirror of himself in that character's madness-a species of love malady that makes Cardenio suffer fits of violent anger amid lucid intervals-the protagonist looks upon Cardenio as a potential model As already discussed, Cardenio turns out to be, if not a model, yet certainly an important source of inspiration for the amorous penance in which the concept of Don Quixote's knightly "self" is definitively fashioned and forged. For it is after contemplating and finally rejecting what for him are the equally "historical" models of Cardenio and Orlando that Don Quixote achieves "perfect imitation" by transforming his quest for a model into what Harry Levin calls an "imitatioAmadi!' (1969,38). Yet despite the protagonist's apparent success, the narrative goes on to reveal that his undertaking this perfect imitatio of a literary model, and his choosing self-definition over self-knowledge, will exact a high price. It is pertinent to recall that Sancho asks his master to explain why the penance is necessary, since other knights who acted thus "had reason to perform such follies and penances" (tuvieron causa para hacer esas necedades y penitencias). By means of an ingenious rationalization, Don Quixote responds that he wants his "lady" to know that "if I do this in the dry, what will I do in the wet?" (si en seco hago esto, ~que hare en mojado?) (DQI: 25, 305). At one level, the protagonist's brief reply represents his unwitting pun on his own humoral imbalance, which deprives his brain of moisture. He undertakes this penance "in the dry" as a choleric who is given to outbursts of wrath and who suffers from an excessively active imagination. Were he to become "wet," the physiological support for his penance, and for his existence as Don Quixote, would disappear. At another level of allusion, however, the protagonist's reply echoes the words that Christ speaks to the women of Jerusalem on his way to Golgotha: "For if these things happen when the wood is green [wet] what will happen when it is dry?" for which the common Spanish

"I Know Who 1 Am"

197

rendering is "Si esto 10 hacen en mojado, ~que haran en seco?" (Luke 23:31). Hence, the protagonist's utterance represents an instance of dramatic irony that evokes the divine model whom he ignores in favor of Amadfs. But they also augur what amounts to the via dolorosa that he will endure between this pivotal choice and the time when, in the final chapter of the "history," sleep restores water to his arid brain, thus allowing him to be shriven in a lucid state, to settle his affairs, and to speak with his friends before dying. From the moment of his "penance" onward, Don Quixote's struggle in Part I consists largely of confirming and preserving his identity. He seeks no further models for imitation. Moreover, by the end of Part I, his efforts to forge and confirm his identity enjoy, from the knight's point of view, what Williamson calls "a qualified success" (1984, 99). But, in the course of Part II, the dissemination of Cide Hamete's history and Sancho's "enchantment" of Dulcinea cause the protagonist to lose authorial control over the text of his persona and his whole chivalric enterprise, which have thus become public domain (El Saffar 1975). Most characters judge him and do to him as they please-granting him his name, perhaps, but often investing that name with an identity of their own choosing and mocking the protagonist with a degree of cruelty that is absent in Part I. Indeed, Part II, which is Don Quixote's via dolorosa, will show the protagonist trying in vain to "disenchant" Dulcinea and to repair the damage caused by the Cide Hamete's history. Put another way, he tries and fails in Part II not simply to forge and confirm, but also to recover the identity he had managed to fashion in Part I. He likewise loses the power to act on that identity as the exemplary successor of Amadis and the knight-errant destined to restore the Golden Age. A parallel to the "mirroring" adventure with Cardenio occurs in Part II, when Don Quixote confronts and "defeats" the university graduate, Sanson Carrasco, posing as the ominously named Knight of the Mirrors (Caballero de los Espejos). Once again, each character is a mirror, an obverse reflection, a blend of likeness-in-unlikeness with respect to the other; twin spirits, perhaps, but not fictional twins. As a direct consequence, the protagonist will later suffer defeat at the hands of the same "person," though the latter is then in the guise of the Knight of the White Moon (el Caballero de la Blanca Luna), a fitting emblem, it seems, for the complementary "lunacy" of both "knights." It is therefore not as an exemplum of the know-thyself" ideal that Don Quixote is, in Sancho's words, "victor over himself" (vencedor de sf mismo) (DQ II: 72, 580).4 In the knight's reply to this statement by his squire, one discerns 4. Sancho, who is shown throughout the narrative to derive much of his knowledge and language from the pulpit, presumably does the same here and thus echoes the title of a famous work of ascetical theology by the Dominican Melchor Cano (15091-1560) titled Treatise on the Victory over Self (Tratado de fa victoria de sf mismo ) (1962).

198

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

self-defeat rather than self-awareness or self-acceptance, as well as the futile desire to persist in a kindred form of madness and self-delusion: Leave off your foolishness, said Don Quixote; and let us put our best foot forward as we enter our village, where we shall give free play to our imaginations, and to our designs for the pastoral life we intend to undertake. (Dejate desas sandeces -dijo don Quijote-; y vamos con pie derecho a entrar en nuestro lugar, donde daremos vado a nuestras imaginaciones, y la traza que en la pastoral vida pensamos ejercitar.) (DQ II: 72, 580) Strictly speaking, of course, it is impossible for the personality called Don Quixote to attain self-knowledge, since that would entail his coming to realize that his models for imitation are fiction rather than history and that "he" is but the poetic construct of his crazed, hidalgo self. After a restorative sleep, it is therefore the hidalgo who achieves some degree of self-knowledge and conquers the delusion of this chivalresque identity. As the dying hidalgo asserts: "I was mad, and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and I am now, as I have said, Alonso Quixano the Good" (Yo fui loco, y ya soy cuerdo; fui don Quijote de la Mancha, y soy agora, como he dicho, Alonso Quijano el Bueno) (DQ II: 74, 590). And yet, without denying that the hidalgo attains a degree of selfknowledge that remains impossible for Don Quixote, I would suggest that a moral paradox informs the seemingly straightforward portrayal of our protagonist's rwo personalities. If Don Quixote's imitatio Amadis makes him just the opposite of a Christ figure, what occurs during the course of his via dolorosa, particularly the mockery he suffers in the ducal palace and the city of Barcelona, shows his moral superiority over those who deceive him and subject him to ridicule. Not that his lunacy ceases to be lunacy or to provoke laughter for characters and readers alike. But throughout Part II, Don Quixote remains far more sinned against than sinning. Unlike his mockers, he deceives no one; and, unlike the Don Quixote of Part I, attacks no one. Further, the association berween him and Christ in the penance of Sierra Morena alludes to Don Quixote as the author's innovative Silenus-certainly mad, yet suffering unjustly and capable of showing "nobility" and even wisdom in his madness. The hidalgo, by contrast, seems to be a Silenus in reverse, thus making the hidalgo-Don Quixote union a doubly paradoxical one of contrary Sileni within a Silenus. What marks the hidalgo's presumptive "return to sanity" is his speaking repeatedly, in the final chapter, about the "mercies" of God (misericordias) as well

"I Know Who 1 Am"

199

as his speaking in the most socially sanctioned species of historical discoursethat of law-in order to complete his will. Yet the saintly epithet Alonso Quixano the Good, mentioned for the first time in this chapter, and by the hidalgo himself, leads us to suspect that he has retained his penchant for self-flattery and selfnaming which he revealed at the start of the "history." What is more, in his explicit claim to have returned to sanity, and definitively to be "Alonso Quixano The Good," lies a tacit claim along the lines of "I know who I am." Indeed, Alonso Quixano the Good is an imaginary moral and religious self Further, his speaking in the socially sanctioned language of law does not prevent his using that language to foist an impossible fiction on the world, specifically on his niece, who will forfeit her inheritance unless she marries a man who not only has never read chivalric romance, but who "does not know what books of chivalry are" (no sabe que cosas sean libros de caballerias) (DQII: 74, 590). Indeed, the niece's prospective husband must prove incapable of understanding this section of the will. The hidalgo "dies" a Christian death and is saved, thanks to the represented mercy of God and the actual mercy of the author, Miguel de Cervantes: "father" and "stepfather" of both personalities. Saved but not altogether "cured." It seems to me that when confronted with the self-conferred epithet Alonso Quixano the Good, we sense an invitation from the author to question, though not necessarily to deny, the propriety of that title in relation to the protagonist, and even in relation to the analogous selves that we, too, are apt to "beget" in the domain of history. Is Alonso Quixano, or any idle reader, really "the Good"? Perhaps we may answer that complex question in language that resembles the seventeenthcentury articulation of the hidalgo's presumed surname, Quixano (pronounced "qui-sha-no"): ''Alonso 'quiza no' ('perhaps not') el Bueno (the Good)."

Exemplars at First Sight: Don Quixote Meets Don Diego de Miranda Let us now turn to the encounter between Don Diego and Don Quixote. Respectively, the three chapters devoted to that encounter comprise (1) the dialogue between master and squire about the former's victory over the Knight of the Mirrors, followed by the first meeting between Don Quixote and Don Diego, which gives way to their mutual introductions; (2) the adventure with the lion, which results in the protagonist's adopting the name Knight of the Lions (Caballero de los Leones) and culminates in Don Diego's earnest invitation for the knight and squire to stay at his home; (3) Don Quixote's four-day visit at

200

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

Don Diego's estate, as well as his acquaintance with Don Diego's wife and son, Dona Cristina and Don Lorenzo. The self-conscious narrative of these episodes involving the protagonist and the man in green leads both the reader and Don Diego to engage in an exercise of self-examination. 5 In a manner that seems to anticipate later critical reception of his work, but in fact adheres to the Silenic quality of both his fiction and his protagonist, the author startles the potentially "idle reader" (desocupado lector) into a critical response of self-reflection. In particular, Cervantes seems to cast those episodes in the form of a debate between two contrary readings: one hard, the other soft, on both the protagonist and his chivalric ethos. 6 According to the first of those readings, Don Diego would seem to represent an "exemplary" Christian figure.? Moreover, in his introductory remarks to Don Quixote and Sancho, the man in green describes himself in a manner that broadly follows the same pattern as the description of the hidalgo, whose name is disputed among the "authors who write about this matter" (autores que deste caso escriben) (DQ I: 1, 171). Presented as the protagonist's polar opposite-or so it would seem-Don Diego gives his full name, his place of origin, and a description of his very different social status, which is "more than moderately wealthy" (mas que medianamente rico). His favorite "pastimes" (ejercicios) (DQ II: 16, 153) include hunting and fishing, again echoing the description of the book's opening chapter. But Don Diego is careful to clarifY: "I keep neither a falcon nor hounds, but rather a meek partridge or a daring ferret" (no mantengo ni halc6n ni galgos, sino algun perdig6n manso, 0 algun hur6n atrevido). More interesting, in a manner similar to that of the protagonist, Don Diego chooses to define himself according to his choice of reading matter, contained in his personal library. As against the protagonist, however, Don Diego has a collection, "up to six dozen books" (hasta seis docenas de libros) (DQII: 16, 153), that IS primarily composed of works of Christian devotion and honest entertain5. A study of Don Diego and Don Quixote that centers, not on the problem of self-knowledge, but on the cuerdo loco (mad/sane) paradox of these episodes, with important references to Erasmus, is Marquez Villanueva (1975, 147-227). As will become apparent, lowe a great debt to this essay, although my reading of these episodes differs in many respects from that of Marquez Villanueva. 6. Important critical studies that address the divisions between Cervantes scholars, largely along the lines of how they judge the protagonist, include those by Allen (1969-79) Predmore (1967), and Efron (1971). 7. Close states: "I have no doubt that Don Diego is meant to be seen as an exemplary figure" (1990b, 48). This does not mean that Close perceives the encounter between Don Quixote and Don Diego as a univocal instance of authorial moralizing: "However-and this is the point I wish to stressthe dialectical opposition of life-styles in the episode involving Don Diego is not explicitly resolved; it is simply presented and lefr to the discreet reader's judgement" (1990b, 52).

"I Know Who lAm"

201

ment. Also in contrast to the protagonist, yet in perfect conformity with the teachings of both Christian humanists and Tridentine moralists, he says that "those [romances] of chivalry have yet to cross the threshold of my door" (los [libros] de caballerfas aun no han entrado por los umbrales de mis puertas) (DQ II: 16, 153) (Forcione 1970,11-48, and Riquer 1973, 279-84). He actively cultivates the virtue of religion by attending daily Mass and keeping his devotions to the Blessed Virgin. He strives to live the moral virtues by avoiding occasions of sin and idle gossip. He also exercises the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity: "I always keep faith in the mercy of God, our Lord" (confio siempre en la misericordia de Dios nuestro Senor); and "I share of my goods with the poor" (reparto de mis bienes con los pobres). Nonetheless, he never boasts of his good works, "so as never to let hypocrisy and vanity into my heart" (por no dar entrada en mi coraz6n a la hipocresia y vanagloria). He lives the social virtue of hospitality by frequently dining with friends and entertaining them: "my guests are clean and well groomed, and by no means few" (son mis convites limpios y aseados, y no nada escasos) (DQII: 16, 153). Don Diego would also seem an archetype of both marital fidelity and parental love, spending most of his time at home, he says, "with my wife and with my children" (con mi mujer, y con mis hijos), and hoping that his son will pursue a career in either law or sacred theology, "the queen of all [the sciences]" (la reina de todas [las ciencias]). It seems, too, that his purity of heart leads him both to recognize and praise the Christian simplicity of Sancho, just as his humility leads him to confess: "I am not a saint, but a great sinner" (No soy santo, sino gran pecador) (DQ II: 16, 153). What is more, in these three chapters the temperate gentleman exemplifies the most important cardinal virtue of prudence or discrecion-always and everywhere the quintessence of the golden mean. 8 It would seem that his chief concern is, and should be, to remain as he is: 8. Bates (1945) discusses the various, often ironic, uses of discrecion in Cervantes' works. In particular, she addresses the precise distinction between "prudence" and discrecion in the time of Cervantes that thus broke with the formerly synonymous meaning of the two terms in medieval works of moral theology (1945,14-17). As virtues, rather than simply as qualities of mind (e.g., shrewdness), the two terms continued to be used interchangeably. Regarding the character of Don Diego, I think it important to bear in mind that Cervantes is playing on two related notions of the term prudence. The first, classical acceptation relates to the most cardinal (cardo in Latin means "hinge") of all the cardinal virtues (the others being justice, fortitude, and temperance), and denotes both the ability and the readiness to suit the proper means to a morally praiseworthy end. Thus prudence is the sine qua non of all the virtues. It orders and compels actions according to their proper ends. Classical prudence may often involve risk and necessitate decisive action. The second, "decadent" acceptation of prudence denotes a self-serving tendency to avoid risk and to decide only in favor of such actions as will benefit oneself. Both forms of prudence are grounded in a type of "foresight" (pro-videre): one suiting means and actions to objectively

202

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

orthodox, sane, sober. Paraphrasing Fray Luis de Leon, one may choose to dub him "the perfect husband" (el perfecto casado), a character who seems to emerge directly from either the philosophy of Christian Epicureanism, as described by Erasmus and his followers, or even from the catechism of the Council of Trent. 9 By contrast, the identity of his counterpart is fully bound up with romances of chivalry, which makes Don Quixote a negative example of secular and pernicious reading. On numerous occasions, the protagonist claims to make a religious vocation of knight-errantry. His devotions to Dulcinea are a blasphemous parody of authentic Christian worship, and he never once attends Mass. Buoyed by his recent defeat of the Knight of the Mirrors, he boasts hyperbolically about his heroic deeds and his published history: [And] so, because of my brave, numerous and Christian deeds, I have proved deserving to appear in print in nearly all, or in most, nations of the world. Thirty thousand volumes of my history have been printed, and it is on the way to being printed a thousand times thirty thousand, unless heaven prevents it. ([y] as!, por mis valerosas, muchas y cristianas hazafias he merecido andar ya en estampa en casi todas 0 las mas naciones del mundo. Treinta mil volumenes se han impreso de mi historia, y lleva camino de imprimirse treinta mil veces de millares, si el cielo no 10 remedia.) (DQ II: 16, 151)

good ends; the other suiting means and limiting actions to subjectively beneficial ends. Implicitly; Don Diego, a decadent, prebourgeois version of the caballero, claims to live the classical virtue of prudence while, in fact, adhering to the more self-serving type. I submit that this decadent form of prudence lies at the heart of what Marquez Villanueva ably describes as Cervantes' moral critique of Erasmus's Christian Epicureanism (1975, 173-74). For a thorough discussion of the classical understanding of prudence, in contradistinction to its more modern acceptation, see Pieper 1966, 3-40. 9. Marquez Villanueva convincingly argues that Don Diego's moral philosophy derives from Christian Epicureanism in "El Caballero del Verde Gaban" (1975, 168-75). Although I subscribe to this reading in the main, I also believe that Cervantes ironically adds such elements of Tridentine religiosity as daily attendance at Mass and Marian devotion to reinforce the impression in his readership of Don Diego's self-proclaimed sanctity. The typical portrait that Cervantes has Don Diego draw of himself, moreover, aims less at describing a particular philosophical posture than a cliched, popular misunderstanding of what virtue and sanctity entail. That Don Diego is attempting to emulate his own understanding of Erasmus's Epicurean philosophy is true, as Marquez shows. But one ought to avoid implying that Don Diego is a careful student of Erasmus, or a careful reader generally. Helmut Hatzfeld sees Don Diego as a typical example of Tridentine piety and Ignatian spirituality in El "Quijote" como obra de arte dellenguaje (1966, 135-36; 184). A similar view is put forth by Joaquin Casalduero in Sentido y forma del "Quijote" (1970, 259-65). In an important, recent reading, Anthony Close (1990b, 47-52) judges Don Diego as an "exemplary figure" and Don Quixote as an example of rashness and temerity, but without denying the ambiguity of the episodes, and without stressing the obvious religious features of Don Diego's self-portrait.

"I Know Who 1 Am"

203

He will thus continue to seek vainglory and pride as a summum bonum, directing all his energies toward the acquisition of lasting fame and renown. Indeed, in his final advice to Don Diego's son, Lorenzo, Don Quixote implies that the vainglorious desire for fame is properly the chief motivation behind the actions of both poets and knights-errant: [Tlo reach the inacesible summit of Fame, you need only quit the somewhat narrow path of poetry, and to pursue the narrowest of all, which is knight-errantry. ([Plara llegar a la inaccessible cumbre de la Fama, no tiene que hacer otra cosa sino dejar a una parte la senda de la poesfa, algo estrecha, y tomar la estrechfsima de la andante caballerfa.) (DQ II: 19, 176) He lives on the margins of established law and society. He shows nothing but insolence toward sacred theology, deeming both his own profession and poetry to be superior to the true queen of sciences (DQ II: 18, 171). He pursues everything but the golden mean, as confirmed in his adventure with the lions. In that case, by excess, his rashness vitiates the cardinal virtue of courage or fortitude; and, in virtually all his actions, Don Quixote is shown to be extravagant, choleric, and unrestrained: "I delivered myself into the arms of Fortune" (entregueme en los brazos de la Fortuna). Far from exercising the virtue of hospitality, he fosters no desire for a settled, familial life. Moreover, he proudly tells Don Diego that he has "pawned" his entire "estate" (empefie mi hacienda) (DQ II: 16, 151). Lacking both a home and a wife, he is enamored of a poetic commonplace, remotely inspired by the person of a local peasant woman, Aldonza Lorenzo. So, confirmed in both his heresy and his lunacy, he seems to represent what one may call, again in paraphrase of Fray Luis de Le6n, "the world's most imperfect celibate." Even their physical appearance underscores the opposition of the two characters. Don Diego's young and frisky "dapple gray mare" (yegua tordilla) is a clear opposite to the haggard Rocinante. Don Diego is handsome, ruddy, clean, and impeccably dressed, in contrast to an unkempt Don Quixote, whose exceedingly gaunt body and dried flesh are quite probably filthy and foul smelling. Their similarities seem purely accidental. For example, both men have thin faces, though Don Diego is said to be of "aquiline visage" (rostro aguilefio) rather than of "gaunt visage" (rostro enjuto), like his contrary. Both are called hidalgos, though Don Diego is a wealthy enough to bear the title "don," whereas the "ingenioso hidalgo" is not. Both men hail from La Mancha; and both are either in or near their fifties.

204

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

Extravagant Virtue, Prudent Vice: A Lesson in Heroic Sanctity by the Knight of the Lions Yet, such a hardheaded assessment of the two characters seems based on a reading that focuses solely on first impressions. It is for this reason, I believe, that the author has the embodiment of the doxa fallon its knees in the character of Sancho Panza, who begins to worship and kiss the feet of Don Diego as though that fiftyish hidalgo were truly "a saint in short stirrups" (un santo a la jineta) (DQ II: 16, 154)-a view that corresponds to Don Diego's self-definition, and which the squire probably shared, in essence, with many of Cervantes' contemporary readers. There is indeed another side to the question of Don Diego's exemplary virtue. In these chapters, one observes the progressive undoing of Sancho's, and perhaps the reader's, first impressions as well as Don Diego's original self-definition. For if we scrutinize Don Diego's stated principles in light of his actions, we find him wanting from both a religious and a moral point of view. Despite his praise of theology and discriminating reading, he parenthetically asserts that he skims profane books more frequently than devotional works, and does so chiefly in search of "arresting" and "startling" inventiveness: "I skim my profane books more often than my devotional ones, provided they give me honest entertainment, delight me with their language, and arrest and startle me with their inventions" (Hojeo mas los que son profanos que los devotos, como sean de honesto entretenimiento, que deleiten con ellenguaje y admiren y suspendan con la invenci6n) (DQII: 16, 153) Qohnson 1990, 97-98). Hence Don Diego's failure to provide a single citation from any of the works; and hence his commonplace generalizations about those works' presumably edifYing content and their graceful form. The opening proclamation about his litany of virtues and ideals amounts to his pharisaically thanking God that he is unlike the rest of men, thereby making him as guilty as Folly herself of philautia and pride. Moreover, he stresses only the negative side of virtue: avoid idle gossip; shun hypocrisy (Marquez Villanueva 1975, 169). He makes only token gestures of compassion, giving occasional alms, rather than displaying the prescriptive "predilection for the poor" of traditional Catholic doctrine. He does not say "I share my goods" but rather, "I share of my goods with the poor" (reparto de mis bienes con los pobres) (DQ II: 16, 153). His usual guests are, like Don Diego himself, "clean and well groomed" {limpios y aseados) (DQ II: 16, 153)-living emblems of genteel cleanliness and politeness. Though Don Diego claims to spend his days with his wife and children (in the plural), the protagonist's specific question

"I Know Who 1 Am"

205

about the number of children in the wealthy hidalgo's family forces the latter to admit: "I, Don Quixote, have one son" (Yo, senor don Quijote, tengo un hijo) (DQII: 16, 154).10 Furthermore, in what is easily his greatest breach of charity, he says that he would probably consider himself more fortunate never to have been a father at all, since his only son, Lorenzo, has chosen to pursue a career in the frivolous pseudoscience of poetry. Don Diego seems disappointed, at bottom, that Lorenzo has failed to emulate his father's social conformism: "not because he is bad, but rather because he is not as good as 1 should like" (no porque el sea malo, sino porque no es tan bueno como yo quisiera) (DQII: 16, 154). AI> to the moral virtues, if Don Quixote is culpable of an excess of fortitude known as rashness, Don Diego is shown to suffer from the defect of cowardice. 11 For it is ultimately out of cowardice, rather than rightful caution or sanity, that he fails to keep Don Quixote from what appears to be certain death in the latter's adventure with the lion. To be sure, Don Diego tries to dissuade the protagonist from the rash confrontation; yet he does so, again, in a politely conformist manner that not only misrepresents Don Quixote's profession of knight-errantry, but also appeals to a calculating, self-serving notion of prudence, leaving no room for decisiveness or heroism: Sir Knight, knights-errant ought to pursue adventures that offer hope of success, and not those that rule out such hope from the start; for bravery that crosses over into the region of temerity is more a case of lunacy that fortitude. What is more, these lions are not coming after you, nor do they even dream of doing so. They are to be presented to his Majesty, and it would be ill advised to stop them or to hinder their journey. (Senor caballero, los caballeros andantes han de acometer las aventuras que prometen esperanza de salir bien dellas, y no aquellas que de en todo la quitan; porque la valentia que se entra en la juridici6n de la temeridad, 10. At; one may infer from the religiously orthodox, Epicurean lexicon of the following question that Don Quixote puts to Don Diego, the protagonist knows very well the kind of archetypal self-portrait that Don Diego seeks to convey: "Don Quixote asked him how many children he had, and told him that one thing held to be a supreme good by ancient philosophers, who lacked true knowledge of God, was found in the goods of nature, in those of fortune, in having many friends and in having many good children" (Pregunt6le don Quijote que cuantos hijos tenia, y dijole que una de las cosas en que ponian el sumo bien los antiguos 6.16sofos, que carecieron del verdadero conocimiento de Dios, fue en los bienes de la naturaleza, en los de la fortuna, en tener muchos amigos y en tener muchos y buenos hijos) (DQ II: 16, 172). 11. He shares this defective trait with Cardenio. For a classical, Aristotelian and Thomistic summary of the virtue of fortitude, see Pieper 1966, 114-41.

206

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

mas tiene de locura que de fortaleza. Cuanto mas que estos leones no vienen contra vuesa merced; ni 10 suefian: van presentados a su Majestad, y no sera bien detenerlos ni impedirles su viaje.) (DQII: 17, 161) Don Diego's idea of virtue commands no authority and he is woefully ignorant of his audience. Thus his rhetoric fails from a lack of both ethos and pathos. Further, both his rhetorical failure and his meager efforts contrast ironically with his boastful promise to Sancho: "I will see to it that he does not [attack the lions]" (Yo hare que no 10 sea) (DQII: 17, 160). Apparently saving his most "powerful" rhetoric for last, Don Diego is paraphrased as providing a final bit of advice to Don Quixote, yet seeming to adopt a tone more suitable to a gentlemanly debate than to an admonition against imminent suicide: Once more the hidalgo entreated Don Quixote not to do anything so mad, since to pursue such a folly was to tempt God. To which Don Quixote responded that he knew what he was about. The hidalgo responded, in turn, that Don Quixote examine the matter carefully, since he [the hidalgo] was of the opinion that Don Quixote was mistaken. (Otra vez Ie persuadio el hidalgo que no hiciese locura semejante que era tentar aDios acometer tan disparate. A 10 que respondio don Quijote que el sabia 10 que hada. Respondiole el hidalgo que 10 mirase bien; que el entendia que se engafiaba.) (DQII: 17, 162) The reader also learns how Don Diego faintly realizes, but finally shies away from, his duty to intervene-once again, for reasons of calculating, self-serving "prudence" (cordura): The man in the green coat was inclined to thwart him; but he thought himself unequal in arms, and he did not think it prudent to confront a madman, as he now judged Don Quixote to be utterly mad. (Quisiera el del verde gaban oponersele; pero viose desigual en las armas, y no Ie parecio cordura tomarse con un loco, que ya se 10 habia parecido de todo punto don Quijote.) (DQII: 17, 162) In other words, the hidalgo calculates, not the means necessary to bring about a morally sound end-namely, the extreme case of saving a man's life, which requires extreme measures-but only the risk to his own person. What is more,

"I Know Who 1 Am"

207

he is the one, mounted on his light-footed mare, to lead both Sancho and the wagon driver in frantic flight: Don Quixote once again hurried the lion keeper and repeated his threats, which gave the hidalgo a chance to spur his mare, Sancho his ass, and the wagon driver his mules, all of them attempting to get as far as they could from the wagon before the lions sprang loose. ([E]1 cual [don Quijote], volviendo a dar priesa alleonero, y a reiterar las amenazas, dio ocasi6n al hidalgo a que picase la yegua, y Sancho al rucio, y el carretero a sus mulas, procurando todos apartarse del carro 10 mas que pudiesen, antes que los leones se desembanastasen.) (DQ II: 17, 162) Earlier in the narrative, it was also his cowardice that led Don Diego, sporting a scimitar, to flee from Don Quixote and Sancho on the road, and to offer a lame excuse (complete with dramatic irony) for doing so: "Truly, I would not have passed you by, were it not for my fear that my mare's company would unsettle your horse" (De verdad, que no me pasara de largo si no fuera por temor que con la compafiia de mi yegua no se alborotara ese caballo) (DQII: 16, 150; emphasis added). In sum, without the theological virtue of charity, there can be no sanctity. And our self-proclaimed Christian exemplar is lacking in the cardinal virtues of justice (in particular, toward his own son) as well as fortitude. Don Diego's practice fails to match the bluster of his preaching. Regarding his physical appearance, I believe that a simultaneously conflicted and unifYing semiology is at work in the portrayal of Don Diego's attire, which, unlike the hidalgo's conventional house, is described in notable detail: an overcoat of fine green cloth, with strips of tawny [literally: lion-colored] velvet, and a hunting cap of the same velvet; his mare's trappings were for riding in the country, in short stirrups, and likewise purple and green. He wore a Moorish scimitar, hanging from a wide sword belt of green and gold, and his leggings were of the same make as the belt; his stirrups were not gilt but lacquered with green, so shiny and burnished that, because they matched his whole outfit, looked better than if they had been of pure gold. (un gaban de pafio fino verde, jironado de terciopelo leonado, con una montera del mismo terciopelo; el aderezo de la yegua era de campo, y de

208

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

la jineta, asimismo de morado y verde. Traia un alfanje morisco pendiente de un ancho tahali de verde y oro, y los borceguies eran de la labor del tahali; las espuelas no eran doradas, sino dadas con un barniz verde; tan tersas y bruiiidas, que, por hacer labor con todo el vestido, paredan mejor que si fuera de oro puro.) (DQII: 16, 149-50) In his very specific interpretation of Don Diego's appearance, Marquez Villanueva claims that the "motley," the "tropical" glossiness, and the generally "loud tone" (tono chill6n) of the character's outfit derive from the northern European model of dress for jesters and buffoons (1975, 219-23). That critic goes so far as to say that "Don Diego de Miranda dresses to look like a parrot" (don Diego de Miranda viste como un papagayo) (Marquez Villanueva 1975, 220). In response to Marquez Villanueva and others, Gerald Gingras argues that Don Diego's choice of material ("fine cloth" [paiio fino]), his color coordination (green with patches of tawny velvet) and even his choice of spurs (gold burnished with green) were typical of the rural Spanish hidalgo, thus revealing Don Diego's conservative tastes (1985, 129-40). In my view, there is no reason to deny that the underlying theses of both contrary readings, and those of other readings, remain plausible, up to a point, though applicable at different stages of the unfolding narrative. In view of Cervantes' perplexing description, it seems unnecessary to decide conclusively whether his attire marks Don Diego as either perfectly sane and wise or perfectly mad and foolish. 12 fu his garments paradoxically reflect, Don Diego can just as rightly be seen as both sane and mad to some degree. In other words, the author's description, presumably transmitted to the reader through the fictional and, perhaps, doubly fictional filters of Cide Hamete, the translator, the "second author," and the narrator, is "clear" only in its perplexity and conflictedness. Another disputed point is whether the time-honored association in Spanish between the color green and lechery, as in the expression viejo verde (dirty old man), is at all relevant in the case of Don Diego, self-appointed archetype of marital fidelity (Chamberlain and Weiner 1969, 1-6, qtd. in Marquez Villanueva 1975, 150-51 n. 4). Arguing, not just from the colors of the outfit, but from imagery that relates to emblematic symbolism, Percas de Ponseti asserts that he is 12. At; Marquez Villanueva argues (1975, 224-26), Don Diego embodies Cervantes' version of an Erasmian mad/sane paradox. For this reason, I find it perplexing that he should insist on a univocal interpretation (favoring folly and madness) of the character's clothing. The same scholar again takes up the subject of Don Diego's attire (1980, 92-96), insisting on the same unproblematic, univocal interpretation of the character's appearance. In this article, Marquez Villanueva states more than once that the "green" of the character's "overcoat," and not just the general tone of his appearance, is "loud" (chill6n), an assertion for which there is no textual evidence. Presumably this scholar means to imply that green, as such, is intended to be seen as a loud color.

"I Know Who lAm"

209

ultimately meant to be seen as a shifty philanderer-on the prowl, and with much to hide-whose clothing and mount symbolize his deceitfulness through the imagery of chameleon-like disguise and camouflage (1988, 36-53).13 Again, no univocal answer seems possible in this regard, since there is no textual evidence of Don Diego's alleged sexual dalliance. The reader remains uninformed about Don Diego's recent whereabouts, although the character has clearly not been hunting, since he is lacking both his "meek partridge" and his "daring ferret." Further, the reader remains uninformed about whether Don Diego's reference to his "children" (hijos) is, perhaps, a Freudian slip. Arguing along these lines, one may also choose to recall the excuse he improvised for riding past Don Quixote and Sancho on the road-namely, that his mare would probably arouse even Rocinante. It could thus appear that he is not only cowardly, but also somewhat preoccupied with sex. Indeed, despite this remark's expressing a plausible and typical concern of persons in the country, familiar with the behavior of horses, the author seems to draw our attention to the sexual innuendo by having Sancho (a peasant who is undoubtedly familiar with animal behavior) insist that Rocinante is incapable of any such "vileness" (vileza) (DQII: 16, 150). So if the emblematic symbolism is "clear," its function in the text is ambiguous. Less debatable, perhaps, is the immediate consequence of the author's lavishly detailed description of Don Diego as a type of sixteenth-century fashion plate. By any estimation, the striking hidalgo's impeccable, matching attire betokens at least a trace of vanity, which is one of the vices he claims to scorn as unchristian. Only a noteworthy degree of elegance and dash in Don Diego's appearance could justify the repeated emphasis of Don Quixote's addressing him as "Gallant sir" at the start of their encounter, together with the protagonist's reported assessment of Don Diego as "a man of formal bearing" (un hombre de chapa) and "cut from fine [noble] cloth" (de buenas prendas) (DQII: 16, 150).14 Furthermore, it is before the characters exchange any words that the protagonist shows obvious surprise at the physical appearance of Don Diego, identified by 13. Percas de Ponseti makes the compelling distinction between the superficially "impressionistic," favorable portrait of Don Diego, for which she holds Cide Hamete responsible, and the subtly "expressionistic," critical portrait, for which she holds Cervantes responsible (1988, 36-53). Indeed, as this scholar suggests, the two portraits overlap. Percas de Ponseti also wrote an earlier study on Don Diego (1975, 332-82). And, as she argues in both studies, Cervantes' duplicitous portrait aims at contradicting first impressions. As I shall argue presently, his complex portrait also undoes second impressions, suggesting the open form of a continuing dialectic. 14. Although this statement conflicts with the thesis of Gingras (1985, 129-40) concerning the "conservatism" of Don Diego's tastes, it does not conflict with the rationale behind the pertinent legal "decrees"(pragm:iticas) that Gingras cites in support of his arguments. Indeed, as Gingras implies, these decrees were aimed at curbing the ostentatious, extravagant habits of the hidalgo class. Don Diego's "conservatism" is, therefore, relative to a decadent norm. Again, his atrire signals his conformism as well as the noticeable, if less than glaring, vanity of his display.

210

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

his favorite color: "and if the man in green looked closely at Don Quixote, much more closely did Don Quixote look at the man in green" (y si mucho miraba el de 10 verde a don Quijote, mucho mas miraba don Quijote al de 10 verde) (DQ II: 16, 150). To continue our contrary reading, we not only notice Don Quixote's quoting from Ovid on the nobility of poetry, "est Deus in nobiS' (DQ II: 16, 156), but we also observe that he is thus putting a decidedly Christian spin, a 10 divino, on a pagan text. So just as Don Diego's "reading" habits tended to profane the sacred, Don Quixote's tend, in this instance, to sanctify the profane. Furthermore, one can hardly accuse Don Quixote of failing to assimilate his sources. Again, without vague generalization, but quoting directly from a ballad, he first defines himself to Don Diego as a knight "like those of whom the people say, / they go seeking their adventures" (destos que dicen las gentes / que a sus aventuras van) (DQII: 16, 151).15 To the degree he is quixotic, and he is not always so, Don Quixote appears throughout the text as a paradigm of the irascible activist. Yet it is he, rather than the sober champion of ascetic devotions, who is said to admire the wondrous, contemplative silence of Don Diego's quasi-monastic mansion: "[W]hat pleased Don Quixote most was the marvelous silence that was present throughout the house, which resembled a Carthusian monastery" ([Dle 10 que mas se contento don Quijote fue del maravilloso silencio que en toda la casa habia, que semejaba un monasterio de cartujos) (DQII: 16, 173).16 In his opening remarks, the ardent seeker of lasting fame and honor regrets having to describe himself at all, and closes, not with a grandiloquent "I always keep faith in the mercy of God, Our Lord," but with a self-deprecating reference to his unkempt and weary appearance: "the sallowness of my complexion and my weary leanness" (la amarillez de mi rostro y mi atenuada flaqueza) (DQII: 16, 152). It strikes me as no accident that in Cervantes' text, a childless, lifelong bachelor, in love with an imaginary damsel, should utter the work's most apposite words about parental love: "Children, sir, are parts of their parents' very entrails, 15. About these verses, Luis Andres Murillo notes in his edition of Don Quixote (DQ I, 140 n. 7): "They corne from either an ancient ballad (now lost) or from the pen of Alvar G6mez of Ciudad Real who used them in his rendering of Petrarch's Trionfi (T.c., III, vv. 79-84), though nothing resembling those verses appears in the original work" (Son 0 de un romance antiguo [perdido] 0 de la pluma de Alvar G6mez de Ciudad Real que los emple6 en su traslaci6n de los Trionfi de Petrarca [Triumphus Cupidinis, III, vss. 79-84], sin que haya en la obra original nada que se parezca a ellos). The same verses appear twice in Part I of Cervantes' fiction: I, 9; and I, 49. 16. On the predominantly mystical sources and the significance of "marvelous silence" (maravilloso sileneio) in this passage, see Marquez Villanueva (1975, 155-59). Trueblood also discusses silence and silences in Don Quixote (1958, 160-80). A more recent study on silences in several of Cervantes' works, with ample bibliography on the Quixote, is Egido 1991,21-46.

"I Know Who 1 Am"

211

and so we should love them, whether they are good or bad, as we love the souls that give us life" (Los hijos, senor, son pedazos de las entranas de sus padres, yas! se han de querer, 0 buenos 0 malos que sean, como se quieren las almas que nos dan vida). No less sagely, Don Quixote urges against the tendency of some parents to force their son's choice of career. He suggests, instead, that they let their son "follow the subject to which he seems most inclined" (seguir aquella ciencia a que mas Ie vieren inclinado). Never losing sight of his audience, and arguing with the utmost reasonableness-showing both ethos and pathos-Don Quixote also proffers considered and balanced praise of poetry and its virtues, beginning with the assertion that "although [the science] of poetry is less practical than delightful, it is not one of those [sciences] which dishonor the persons who possess them" (aunque la [ciencia] de la poes!a es menos util que deleitable, no es de aquellas que suelen deshonrar a quien las posee) (DQII: 16, 155). The protagonist is also far less crazy and rash than one is first led to assume by his adventure/nonadventure with the lion. With flawless moral and pedagogical reasoning, Don Quixote states that he was right in attacking the lions, though he knew it to be a rash act: "which I knew to be a reckless temerity" (que conoci ser temeridad esorbitante) (DQ II: 17, 167; emphasis added). Following a perfect description of the classical virtue of fortitude, he goes on to give the reason behind his intentional madness: "[F]or just as it is easier for the spendthrift to become generous than it is for the miser, so it is easier for the man who is rash to become truly brave than it is for the coward to reach true bravery" ([Q]ue as! como es mas facil venir el pr6digo a ser liberal que al avaro, as! es mas facil dar el temerario en verdadero valiente que no el cobarde subir a la verdadera valentia) (DQII: 17, 167). The knight finishes his lesson with a rather pointed reference to Don Diego's natural weakness: "[M] ark my words, Don Diego, sir,. . . for it sounds better when persons hear 'such and such knight is reckless' than when they hear 'such and such knight is fainthearted and cowardly'" (creame vuesa merced, senor don Diego, . . . porque mejor suena en las orejas de los que 10 oyen "el tal caballero es temerario y atrevido" que no "el tal caballero es timido y cobarde") (DQII: 17, 167-68). Neither truly a don nor a caballero, the protagonist demonstrates the most salient virtue of knighthood to the caballero Don Diego de Miranda. What is more, he does so by proposing the classical, Aristotelian remedy for defective vice, which consists of compensating by way of excess. 17 He corrects Don Diego's reductive view of knight-errantry, a profession that the latter seems to confuse with that of a courtly knight: 17. At; Aristotle writes in Nichomachean Ethics: "We must also examine what we ourselves drift into easily. For different people have different natural tendencies towards different goals, and we shall come to

212

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

But the knight-errant searches out the corners of the earth; enters the most intricate mazes; pursues the impossible at every step; endures, at the height of summer, the sun's burning rays in the deserted plains, and in winter the harsh inclemency of winds and ice. No lions shall daunt him, nor monsters make him shudder nor dragons bring him fear. For to seek them, confront them and overcome them all are his foremost and rightful exercises. (Pero el andante caballero busque los rincones del mundo; entrese en los mas intricados laberintos; acometa a cada paso 10 imposible; resista en los paramos despoblados los ardientes rayos del sol en la mitad del verano, y en el invierno la dura inclemencia de los vientos y de los yelos; no Ie asombren leones, ni Ie espanten vestiglos, ni atemoricen endriagos; que buscar estos, acometer aquellos y vencerlos a todos son sus principales y verdaderos ejercicios.) (DQ II: 17, 167) Such "exercises" belong to an entirely different order from that of Don Diego's pastimes (which he called his "exercises") of fishing and hunting for small game. More important, the ethos of Don Quixote, erstwhile promoter of lunacy and heresy, stresses the positive and heroic side of all the virtues, whereas Don Diego's ethos stresses only the negative, Epicurean admonition: "nothing in excess" (Marquez Villanueva 1975, 177)Y Indeed, as the Church had firmly established by Cervantes' time-and as every informed Catholic knew since the know our own tendencies from the pleasure or pain that arises in us. We must drag ourselves off in the contrary direction; for if we pull far away from error, as they do in straightening bent wood, we shall reach the intermediate condition" Nichomachean Ethics (1985, 52-53; 2.9.1109b). Aristotle closes this second book of his Ethics with the following assertion: ''All this makes it clear, then, that in every case the intermediate state is praised, but we must sometimes incline towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for that is the easiest way to succeed in hitting the intermediate condition and [doing] well" (1985, 53; 2.9.1109b). An earlier remark in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, book 2, supports the opinion that Don Quixote previously expressed to Don Diego: "In some cases the deficiency, in others the excess, is more opposed to the intermediate condition; e.g., it is cowardice, the deficiency, not rashness, the excess, that is more opposed to bravery" (1985, 50; 2.9.1109a). Also, on the remedy for either excessive or defective vice, see Aquinas's Commentary on the ''Nichomachean Ethics" (1964, 164-68). In paragraph 381 of that work, Aquinas writes: "However, sometimes we must incline toward excess and sometimes toward defect either on account of the nature of the virtue or on account of our inclination .... Thus the mean according to which a thing is done well [i.e., virtuously] will be easily discovered (168). 18. Speaking of the ideal knight errant's heroic virtue to Don Lorenzo, Don Quixote states that "he must be arrayed with all the theological and cardinal virtues, . . . and to speak again of lofty matters, he must keep faith in God and in his lady; he must be chaste in thought, honest in word, generous in works, brave in deeds, long suffering in trials, charitable toward the needy; and, last, champion of the truth, though its defense cost him his life" (ha de estar adornado de todas las virtudes teologales y cardinales,. . .

"I Know Who 1 Am"

213

time of Saint Isidore of Seville (530?-636}-virtue lived to a heroic degree was, and still is, the very definition of sanctity and the standard for canonization. 19 The seemingly obvious doxa of Sancho's popular wisdom and of Don Diego's first attempt at self-figuration and self-knowledge thus seems to collapse upon critical examination.

Open Synthesis: The Silenic Unfolding of Character, Setting, and Action Nonetheless, we would be mistaken, I believe, to think that Cervantes' narrative undermines one set of hypotheses only to leave another intact. The text both elicits and frustrates the reader's attempt to decide, once and for all, which of the two characters is morally superior. It argues for and against both sides of the same question with equal conviction and doubt, in the manner of Plato's Parmenides and of Cicero's Academic Skeptic and, so, in the manner of Erasmus's Praise of Folly. Like every element and image in the chapters devoted to narrating their encounter, both characters-at the level of word, deed, and physical appearance-are rife with paradox. The two fiftyish hidalgos, their interaction, their appearance, their mounts, the physical objects of their surroundings, all represent a blend of alternately conflicting and converging contraries. In conceptual terms, they represent what Cusanus would call a coincidentia oppositorum. In terms of auditory or musical imagery, they represent a discordia concors; and in visual imagery, a Silenus. Likewise, the two contrary readings that I have summarized here "stand" as contradictory and complementary, the object of praise and censure, parody and exaltation, both preserved and undone in the text. Thesis and antithesis "resolve" into the open synthesis of mystery and progressively learned ignorance. As suggested earlier, both characters try to define themselves according to a belief system derived from their favorite type of exemplary literature. Let me now add that, in the author's text, characters are shown to be mad, and impervious to y volviendo a 10 de arriba, ha de guardar la fe aDios y a su dama; ha de ser casto en los pensamientos, honesto en las palabras, liberal en las obras, valiente en los hechos, sufrido en los trabajos, caritativo con los menesterosos, y, finalmente, mantenedor de la verdad, aunque Ie cueste la vida el defenderla,) (DQII: 18, 171-72), 19, Saint Isidore's formula in the Etymologies (1.39,9) is "For hero is the name given to men who by their wisdom and courage are worthy of heaven" (qtd, in Curti us 1973, 175), On the history of the canonization process and the centraliry of "heroic virtue," see The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), s,v, "Canonization of Saints (History and Procedure),"

214

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

the paradoxical nature of truth, to the extent that they insist on remaining what one may call, paraphrasing Dunn, a stable sign within a closed semiotic system. In other words, characters are mad in the measure that they futilely attempt to collapse, in their own persons, the distinction between life and discourse, contingency and code, and in particular, experience and fiction. 20 For Don Quixote, the semiotic system is chivalric romance, which for him remains closed and univocal in meaning. Don Diego finds an analogous system in secular and devotionalliterature of the Christian Epicurean and Tridentine varieties. The case of Don Diego is, of course, far less extreme than that of Don Quixote. Yet it is significant that we should observe Don Diego at a stage of his life which resembles that of Don Quixote in the first chapter of Part I. There, the protagonist named himself, his horse, and his lady in accord with the semiotic system of chivalric romance, which he invested with the status of exemplary history and the authority of Holy Writ. Like Don Quixote's initial self-fashioning-indeed, a form of self-creation-Don Diego's original self-definition finds expression in an atemporal or habitual present, in perfect accord with his own semiotic system of exemplarity: "/ am an hidalgo"; "/ spend my time with my wife"; "/ have some six dozen books"; "at times / dine with my friends (Soy un hidalgo; paso la vida con mi mujer; tengo hasta seis docenas de libros; alguna vez como con mis amigos) (DQII: 16, 153; emphasis added). Indeed, Don Diego presents himself as a man virtually exempt from history and contingency and as little less than an archetype: whole, changeless, complete. In addition, the reader receives the distinct impression that before his encounter with Don Quixote, Don Diego de Miranda has failed to perceive his life as a narrative or history.21 Up to this moment, it seems that nothing in his experience has posed an effective challenge to his self-definition. All previous events in his life have managed to fit neatly within the pattern of his exemplary plan, derived from a conformist understanding of his "readings." Indeed, Don Diego perceives himself as incarnating the socially approved abstraction of a Christian hidalgo in search of conformist anonymity. Despite their contrary ideologies, then, both characters base their actions on the assumption that "life" will conform, in a predictable fashion, to their poetic code or semiotic system. Thus, they suffer from contrary species of folly, which nonetheless belong to the same genus. 20. Dunn makes a point similar to mine, but without suggesting that this attitude is the measure of a character's madness or folly, in a comparison between Gines de Pasamonte's self-naming and Don Quixote's naming of himself, Dulcinea, and Rocinante (1982, 119-20). At; Dunn astutely observes, Gines de Pasamonte, like Don Quixote, "aspires to make his life total discourse, to abolish the difference between story and diegesis, between the teller, the telling, and the told" (Dunn 1982, 119). 21. I am grateful to Carroll Johnson, whose insightful questions led me to clarify my observations on this aspect of Don Diego's self-portrait.

"I Know Who 1 Am"

215

Unlike the self-styled knight, however, Don Diego is shown to be capable of reassessing his original position in the face of "startling," "arresting" occurrences. The hidalgo, who is certainly more a Gentleman than a Knight of the Green Coat, reveals his fundamental sanity in that he ultimately acknowledges the sound reasoning of Don Quixote on such matters as the nobility of poetry and religious and moral virtue, judging the protagonist to be "a madman veering toward sanity" (un loco que tiraba a cuerdo) (DQII: 17, 166), or in the opinion of Lorenzo, a "loco entreverado" (DQ II: 18, 173): a significantly "mixed breed of lunatic," given to lucid intervals. So to speak, Don Diego stands as one of the fiction's mixed breed of nonlunatics, or cuerdos entreverados: a fundamentally sane man, given to momentary, sometimes severe lapses of moral folly. More important, however, Don Diego shows a capacity for reflective admiratio and awe, when confronted with actions at the level of usus et experientia that challenge his formerly untested assumptions (doxa)-that is, when brought to a state of aporetic crisis concerning the very precepts after which he first attempted to shape his identity. Along these lines, we encounter a spate of terms in II, 16-18, beginning with Don Diego's surname, which relate both conceptually and etymologically to admiratio, the Latin verb forms mirorand mirari (to look or gaze) and to the ideas of surprise, wonder, and mystery that figured prominently, as we have seen, in Covarrubias's definition of paradox. Such terms include arrest, astonish [or startle], gaze, marvel, miracle (suspender, admirar, mirar, maravilla, milagro).22 It is of particular interest to observe this chain of signifiers in reference to the itinerary of Don Diego's scrutinizing gazes, his growing sense of surprise, shock, and reflective wonder. At first, Don Diego is understandably stunned by the protagonist's physical appearance: "The traveler pulled in his rein, with growing astonishment at the figure and face of Don Quixote" (Detuvo la rienda el caminante, admirdndose de la apostura y rostro de don Quijote) (DQ II: 16, 150; emphasis added). Fittingly, however, it is only at the level of physical appearance that the man in green makes his first judgment, filled with admiratio, about the protagonist: The judgment that the man in green reached about Don Quixote was that he had never before seen any man of such bearing and mien. He was astonished at the lankiness of the man's horse, the length of his body, the leanness and sallowness of his face, his weapons, his gestures and demeanor. 22. For words and concepts related to the verb mirar, including the surname Miranda, 1 have found especially useful the entry mirar in Joan Corominas's Diccionario critico etimo16gico de la lengna castellana (1954,3:382-84).

216

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

(Lo que juzg6 de don Quijote de la Mancha el de 10 verde fue que semejante manera ni parecer de hombre no Ie habia visto jamas: Admirole la longura de su caballo, la grandeza de su cuerpo, la flaqueza y amarillez de su rostro, sus armas, su ademan y compostura.) (DQ II: 16, 150-51; emphasis added) His sense of wonder increases after the protagonist gives an accounting of himself-in words. Following a "long pause" (buen espacio), during which he ponders both the appearance and words of Don Quixote, Don Diego asserts: "[Blut you have not succeeded in relieving my amazement at the sight of you . . . ,rather, now that I know [who you are], I am even more astonished and amazed([Plero no habeis acertado a quitarme la maravilla que en mi causa el haberos visto . . . , antes, agora que 10 se [quien soisl, quedo mas suspenso y maravillado) (DQII: 16, 152; emphasis added). Likewise, Sancho's choosing to kiss the man's feet, because the squire thinks him capable of working "miracles" (milagros [from the Latin miracula]) (DQ II: 16, 153), provokes "further amazement in Don Diego" (nueva admiraci6n a don Diego) (DQII: 16,154). Next, our wealthy hidalgo is notably impressed with the logical quality of the madman's discourse: "The man in green stood amazed at Don Quixote's argumentS' (Admirado qued6 el del verde gaban del razonamiento de don Quijote) (DQ II: 16, 157; emphasis added). At the close of II, 16, Don Diego has again reached an important judgment about the protagonist, "pleased in the extreme with Don Quixote's discretion and eloquence" (satisfecho en estremo de la discreci6n y buen discurso de don Quijote), which reflects his ability to alter his opinions according to the demands of experience: "[Hl e was beginning to change his opinion that the man was a nitwit" ([Fl ue perdiendo de la opinion que con el tenia, de ser mentecato") (DQ II: 16, 157; emphasis added). If II, 16, the first of these three chapters, centers on appearances and words (palabras), the next chapter centers on deeds (hechos, obras), shown to be the final manifestation of discourse and the criterion by which Don Diego ultimately assesses the protagonist. In the wake of Don Quixote's confrontation with the lion, together with the protagonist's account of that pivotal, name-changing event, Don Diego (who is identified here by his significant surname, Miranda, rather than by either his cloak or his characteristic color) responds with reflective, contemplative silence: "All this time Don Diego de Miranda had not spoken a word, devoting all his attention to watching and noting the deeds and words of Don Quixote (En todo este tiempo no habia hablado palabra don Diego de

"I Know Who 1 Am"

217

Miranda, todo atento a mirar y no tar los hechos y palabras de don Quijote) (DQ II: 17, 166; emphasis added). Although he is probably overstating his views out of courtesy to his listener, Don Diego tells Don Quixote, at the end of the chapter that "all that you have said and done is balanced on the scale of reason itself" (todo 10 que vuesa merced ha dicho y hecho va nivelado con el fiel de la misma raz6n) (DQ II: 17, 168; emphasis added). It seems, in other words, that Don Diego disagrees with those readers who would dismiss the protagonist's actions as simply rash. Although Don Diego never formulates his judgment in such terms, he clearly realizes that in Don Quixote, he is pondering a moral and rational enigma, or an axiological and logical paradox. Furthermore, Don Diego's continuing meditation on both the words and deeds of the newly dubbed Knight of the Lions leads to a conversation of respectful intimacy with Don Lorenzo: I don't know what to tell you, son, said Don Diego. I can only say that I have seen him do things that make him the maddest man in the world and [heard him] speak words so shrewd [literally: discreet] that they efface and undo his deeds. Speak to him yourself, and take the pulse of what he knows, and, since you are of sound judgment, assess what part of his shrewdness or his folly approaches right reason; though, truth to tell, I think him more mad than sane. (No se 10 que te diga, hijo--respondi6 don Diego--; s6lo te sabre decir que Ie he visto hacer cosas del mayor loco del mundo, y decir razones tan discretas, que borran y deshacen sus hechos; hiblale ttl, y toma el pulso a 10 que sabe, y, pues eres discreto, juzga de su discreci6n 0 tonteria 10 que mas puesto en raz6n estuviere; aunque, para decir verdad, antes Ie tengo por loco que por cuerdo.) (DQ II: 18, 170; emphasis added)

It is appropriate that Don Diego should be the one to observe that the knight's words "undo" the apparent lunacy of his deeds. For, in a compelling instance of paradoxical reversal, it is through this "deed" of respectful conversation with Lorenzo that Don Diego manages, if only in part, to "efface" and "undo" the folly of his formerly harsh "words" about his son. Here, as elsewhere, Don Diego shows himself to be the convex image-the complementary and nonexclusive opposite-of Don Quixote. At the level of "life" and experience, and perhaps owing in part to the advice of Don Quixote, Don Diego begins to overcome the unjust and uncharitable rigidi-

218

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

ties of a discursive, semiotic system that has thus far governed his thought, expression and action. In a descriptive scene containing paradox at the level of both statement and structure, the protagonist and his squire depart from the home of the Mirandas. Both Don Diego and his son stand together in a shared state of reflective amazement over the paradox of Don Quixote's words and deeds: Once again father and son were astonished at Don Quixote's mongrel discourse, now shrewd, now outlandish; and at the firmness and fixity he showed in pursuing at all cost the quest of his adventurous misadventures, to which he held as the aim and target of his longings. (De nuevo se admiraron padre y hijo de las entremetidas razones de don Quijote, ya discretas y ya disparatadas, y del tema y teson que llevaba de acudir de todo en todo a la busca de sus desventuradas aventuras, que las tenia por fin y blanco de sus deseos.) (DQ II: 18, 177; emphasis added) Paradoxically, then, despite his many shortcomings, our notorious skimmer of books is portrayed outside his library as a mirror, albeit an imperfect mirror, of the judicious reader. And his experience within the fictional frame is remarkably analogous to our own outside it. If Don Diego's assessments deserve the modifiers "reflective" and "judicious" which they are given here, it is because he manages to entertain the possibility of "truth" contained in the radically opposed ethos of Don Quixote, in accord with a dialectical method that traces back to Plato's Parmenides and includes the dialogical writings of Cicero, Augustine, Lucian, Erasmus, and the Christian humanists. But, in Cervantes' text, such dialogue is never confined to an exchange of abstract ideas or words (without deeds) between characterological types. Rather, in these chapters, what one may call Cervantes' Silenic imagery and his overarching spirit of dialogism extend to the deeds, physical surroundings, and unfolding process of verbal and nonverbal interaction between two individualized and paradoxical characters-characters who are progressively rendered in their individuality, despite their own "attempts" to remain as timeless archetypes. Furthermore, as individual readers, our contrary readings, one favoring the ethos of Don Diego, the other favoring the ethos of Don Quixote, as that of the model Christian "hero," may lead us to understand the same "truths" about Don Diego that he comes to understand about himself. Increased knowledge for the reader is textually represented as self-knowledge for Don Diego. For readers of the fictional text, arguing two sides of a question takes the form of contrary readings. For Don Diego, it takes the form of an encounter with a contrary charac-

"I Know Who 1 Am"

219

ter: his mirror in age, appearance, folly, regional origin, and social status. Don Quixote's passing through "the threshold of his door" was the "startling," experiential equivalent of Don Diego's reading the romances of chivalry. Significantly, this experiential "reading" translates into Don Diego's starting to alter his social conformism. He shows a truly charitable and respectful "predilection" for Don Quixote and Sancho. He shares his home, his goods, his friendship, and his familial life with guests who are nothing if not "poor," unable to return the favor, and far from "clean and well groomed." That the protagonist's presence in Don Diego's home marks a startling disruption of their domestic routine seems plain from the reaction of both Don Lorenzo and Dona Cristina: "Mother and son were stunned by the sight of Don Quixote's strange appearance" (Madre y hijo quedaron suspensos de ver la estrana figura de don Quijote) (DQ II: 18, 169; emphasis added). And although it ranks among the many things left unwritten, one may find it tempting to ponder how Don Diego's neighbors might have responded to his entertaining such unusual guests. Thanks in no small measure to Don Quixote's appearance, words and deeds, but also thanks to Don Diego's attitude of openness and generosity, the protagonist's visit with the Mirandas represents nothing less than the paradox, or the apparent impossibility, of a chivalric-Epicurean, "domestic" adventure. If, in another instance of dramatic irony, Sancho overstates the case of Don Diego's virtue in thinking that the latter "must be able to perform miracles," it is nonetheless true that these chapters contain a series of marvels (mirabilia) bearing on the incipient transformation of the man in green. Thus his surname, Miranda, signals the appearance of such extraordinary marvels in the most ordinary circumstances, inviting one to "gaze" and "wonder," to "gaze" intently and "wonder" reflectively, and to become increasingly aware and self-aware. But, even more reflectively, the gerundive inflection of Don Diego's surname also draws the reader's attention to the "things continually to be wondered at" (miranda) when he adopts this character's perspective, or when he recognizes the specularity of the text and Miranda as a mirror of himself For Don Diego represents a fellow "reader" (judge) of Don Quixote. Ultimately grounded either inside or outside the fictional frame of the author's text, Don Diego and the reader are involved in an analogous adventure, an analogous internal debate, an analogous dialogue, an analogous process of self-examination and self-reflection. Revealing truths beyond the two extremes, the unfolding story of Don Diego's momentary crisis paradoxically upholds, undoes, conflates, and enlarges such formerly rigid contraries as sacred and profane, sanity and lunacy, poetry and history, action and contemplation, vice and virtue, and especially self and other. For, if they so choose, one paradox that Don Diego and the reader come

220

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

specifically to understand in these chapters is that self-knowledge takes the form of an unfolding, social, and dialogic enterprise. The self-fashioning that follows from that knowledge constitutes both an individual and collective work of arta voluntary act of inventive imitatio that is in dialogue or in conflict with the world of empirical experience. To be sure, the process of Don Diego's reflective wonder about the appearance, words, and deeds of the protagonist, as well as his subsequent judgments and actions, jointly mark at least his temporary willingness to relinquish the fixity of his semiotic system, which resulted in his sancta mediocritas and his static, archetypal understanding of selP3 But to paraphrase Close, the character of Don Diego is far from resolved (I990b, 52). There is no guarantee, and no explicit indication, that he will continue to act on what he learns about himself from his encounter with Don Quixote. In what concerns the self-satisfied mediocrity and physical cowardice latent in his ethos, it is worth pointing out that the character's first name, Diego, is a diminutive of Santiago or Saint James. This name therefore contrasts Don Diego ironically with "Saint James the Moorkiller" (Santiago Matamoros), Spain's national exemplar of the Christian hero, or the quintessential "saint in short stirrups." It is hardly accidental that the "tawny velvet" of his cap and cloak should be described as "terciopelo leonado" [literally: lion-colored velvet]-another, more cryptic, reference by the author in these chapters to the idea of "lion" turned pussycat. But, if the name Diego suggests ironic censure of folly (cowardice), that name may also contain a hidden note of praise. One must bear in mind the clear affinity berween Spain's semiofficial, chivalric understanding of "heroic virtue" and Don Quixote's derivative ethos of knight-errantry. It is because of the affinity berween those rwo conceptions of "sanctity"-those rwo conceptions of the Christian knight-that the protagonist laughs at Sancho's assessment of Don Diego as a "saint." For that laughter amounts to Don Quixote's scornfully dismissing Don Diego as a "knight." Yet in the chapter devoted to Don Quixote's examination of the icons, our hero proves unsuccessful in his efforts to maintain any equation berween sainthood and knighthood. His failure in this regard becomes especially evident in his contrived description of Saint Paul: "knight-errant in life, tenderfoot saint in death" (caballero andante por la vida, y santo a pie quedo por la muerte) (DQII: 23. On Neoepicurean aurea mediocritas, see Marquez Villanueva 1975, 161. Lurking beneath this doctrine, of course, is lukewarmness, one of the chief enemies of the spiritual life, associated with worldly riches, first denounced in the Book of Revelation, in John's letter to the seventh church at Laodicea: "I know all about you: how you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other, but since you are neither, but only lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth. You say to yourself, 'I am rich, I have made a fortune, and have everything I want,' never realizing that you are wretchedly and pitiably poor, and blind and naked too" (Rev. 3:15-18).

"I Know Who lAm"

221

58,473). Indeed, Paul's sainthood effectively resists the Procrustean bed of Don Quixote's code, or semiotic system. So, the protagonist's ethos of heroism may be an effective mirror for Don Diego, but is hardly superior, or free of defects. 24 Don Quixote, like Don Diego, represents at once a paradoxical character and the object of Cervantes' parody or unstable irony. In this light, one may come to understand that besides satirizing cowardice, the name "Diego" also satirizes a facile, quixotic equation between heroic virtue and manliness, on the one hand, and military prowess and vain temerity, on the other. In short, the doubly satirical name also alludes to the spiritual strength of character (an interior and enlarged form of Santiago-like fortitude) that this Diego reveals, in inchoate form, after pondering the cogent lunacy of the Knight of the Lions-a lunacy that posed a bracing challenge to the cowardice first intimated in his habit of pious skimming. Equally important, both the character and the reader have come to observe that one's self-knowledge and identity are neither devoid of all structure nor perfectly completed forms, but an aesthetic project that, like the text, remains perennially "under construction" and dialectically in the making. Indeed, with respect to the self, and with respect to discourse about the self, Cervantes' text dramatizes the paradoxical need for sameness in change and stability in instability. If they are to understand the action within Cervantes' narrative, both characters and readers must rely on the momentary stability of logical and semantic categories that govern two contrary codes, and that govern two contrary readings of the episodes involving Don Diego and Don Quixote. This is so whether that "action" takes shape as a fictional narrative (reader) or as a "historical" experience (Don Diego). On the other hand, the chief defect of each code is shown to derive from its static, archetypal, and atemporal pretensions. 25 Such rigidity of thought and discourse is shown to obviate understanding, foreclose (by trying to "resolve") mystery, and prevent dialogue. Don Diego's novel openness to apparent contradiction-to a dialogic process revealing virtue in apparent vice, sanity in apparent madness, or self in otherenables him to invest his discourse, for a time, with a humanizing flexibility. Thus, he begins to enlarge, through an ultimately mysterious act of freedom, his logical and semantic categories of both judgment and action. His attitude of 24. Castro (1974, 141) gives his famous assessment of how Cervantes viewed "saints in short stirrups"-an assessment that, I believe, unduly glorifies the purportedly liberating (because individualistic) ethos of Don Quixote. In a similar vein, Marquez Villanueva seems to overstate the same issue, dismissively claiming that Cervantes views "saints in short stirrups" simply as "objects of laughter" (cosa de risa) (1975, 168). 25. On Cervantes' language of travel and motion, see Hutchinson 1992.

222

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

reflective wonder (admiratio) and respect toward Don Quixote reveals the likelihood of his openness to further novelty, mystery and paradox. Reinforcing the idea of stability in instability, and the need for openness to novelty and paradox, the symbolism in these chapters appears more dynamic than "emblematic." What is more, it seems more tenable to perceive the author's symbolism, throughout the narrative, as shifting and kaleidoscopic in its significance, thus predicated upon a narrative logic of developing intelligibility and cumulative effect. Likewise, as set forth in these chapters, it is important to stress that the life narrative of Don Diego, together with its "meaning," remain unfinished. What is more, at the close of II, 18, his story and its meaning have begun anew. It is a story that "ends" with a fresh beginning, with intimations of a forthcoming conversion or its opposite. The character seems to recognize, and through him the reader may choose to recognize, their shared moral place in the middest: somewhere between vice and virtue, or madness and sanity. Within the larger narrative that centers on Don Quixote, the tale of Don Diego's moral, logical, and semantic impasse does not constitute a full story about his life, but rather a life story in potentia. As already discussed, Don Diego's original self-definition shows him at a stage of his life analogous to that of the mad hidalgo in the first chapter of Part I, when the latter set the terms of a semiotic system that would govern the rest of his personal history. Respectively, those two pregnant moments of the narrative reveal one hidalgo relying on an archetypal, literary understanding of self to embark on a career of choleric extravagance, and thus avert historic oblivion; the other relying on an equally archetypal, literary understanding of self to sink into sanguine conformism, and thus embrace historic oblivion. By the time he meets Don Diego on the road, the knight seems to possess a "history" in every sense of that term. For this reason, he casts his self-definition chiefly in the preterite tense: "I departed my native land, pawned my estate, left my luxury behind, and delivered myself into the arms of Fortune" (Sal! de mi patria, empefie mi hacienda, deje mi regalo, y entregueme en los brazos de la Fortuna). Nonetheless, the protagonist strives to make his life narrative flow with an inexorable logic from the archetypal self-definition that begins his historical summary: "[ am a knight 'of those whom the people say, / they go forth, seeking their adventures'" ([S] OJ caballero "destos que dicen las gentes / que a sus aventuras van") (DQII: 16, 151; emphasis added). In fact, Don Quixote seems to believe that by uttering this archetypal definition of his ethos (coterminous with his madness) he will do away with Don Diego's sense of wonder: "but you will cease to do so [to wonder] when I tell you, as I am telling you, that I am a

"I Know Who 1 Am"

223

knight" (pero dejara vuesa merced de estarlo [maravillado] cuando Ie diga, como Ie digo, que soy caballero) (DQ II: 16, 152). He is, of course, mistaken in this prediction. More significant, however, what Don Quixote says about his historic self is erroneous, if not mendacious. Intentionally or no, he is "telling lies." The reader will remember that the protagonist, while still an hidalgo, pawned only part of his estate, and that he did so not to pursue his career in knight errantry, but to purchase more romances of chivalry. Furthermore, the knight left no life of "luxury" (regalo), but a marginal hidalgo's life of idleness, ennui, and addle-brained fantasy. In addition, Don Quixote grossly misrepresents both the content and success of his written "history." Fittingly, then, II, 16 begins with the knight's continued delusions of grandeur rather than with the meeting between him and Don Diego. In that moment of the narrative, Don Quixote refuses to acknowledge that he has not defeated a fellow knight, but his neighbor, the university graduate Sanson Carrasco. Furthermore, our hero attributes the likeness obtaining between his "enemy's" visage and that of Sanson to the ubiquitous enchanters. His story and his selfignorance have therefore proceeded apace with his semiotic system and his original self-definition, both of which remain not only fixed and closed but also in a state of continuing conflict with the physical objects, events, and persons of his surroundings. If Don Quixote continues to stand as a moral paradox, it is because his lunacy remains integral to his "heroism"-the reforming ideals warped by his madness, his real virtues such as courage, honesty, and fidelity, and his depth of conviction. None of this, however, makes him either sane or self-aware. And the text nowhere presents the knight's depth of conviction, or fanaticism, as a measure of morality. But to compromise the knight's lunacy would mean compromising his ability to act as an effective mirror on Don Diego and on other characters and codes within the heterocosm. In other words, it would compromise the wisdom contained in his particular enterprise and his particular form of madness. What we observe in Don Diego, by contrast, is but the beginning of a life narrative that is potentially different in kind. But the chapters devoted to the beginning of a potential story seem to deny their readers the false solace of closure. We are left to conjecture about the potentially heroic, felicitous, tragic, or pathetic outcome of Don Diego's life narrative, and about whether he will continue to grow in self-knowledge once his "adventure" with Don Quixote comes to an end. Even when we reach the close of the chapters concerning the encounter between Don Quixote and Don Diego, I believe it would be rash to judge Don Diego an exemplary figure. His ability to undertake a pursuit of "virtue" will depend on his willingness not only to continue pondering, but also to continue assimilating

224

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

features of the knight's heroic/lunatic ethos. Indeed, as Don Diego himself seems to recognize, the remedy for his own folly lies precisely in those features of Don Quixote's ethos that our man in green and tawny velvet once found most insane and imprudent. It is true that Don Diego begins to reform his behavior toward his son. Moreover, his behavior toward Don Quixote and Sancho evinces a willingness to overcome his habits of timidity, lukewarmness, and conformism. But a potential for self-absorption continues to linger in Don Diego, as suggested in his vain sartorial habits. In addition, one negative element of his portrait remains unaddressed: namely, if he is not a philanderer-and, despite the emblematic symbolism noted by Percas de Ponseti, there is no textual evidence to suggest that he is-Don Diego shows a rather alarming disregard for his wife. 26 The contrast between the emblematic symbolism and the evidence-together with Don Diego's confusing remark about how many children he has-may point to a life that is as deficient in erotics and marital love as it is in heroics. Don Diego, then, remains a moral paradox as well-worthy by turns of praise and blame-an exemplum, as it were, of virtually every reader's moral place in the middest. fu we accompany Don Quixote and Sancho at the dose of II, 18, we leave Don Diego in his embryonic stage of self-awareness, marked by his capacity for self-scrutiny, reflective wonder, and incipient moral reform. Hence, without denying the relevance of other, earlier meanings (folly and sane conservatism, vanity and conformism), I would suggest that at this stage of the narrative, we also regard Don Diego's identifying color, repeated thirteen times over the course of three chapters, in an equally traditional fashion: as a latent symbol, beneath the tawny velvet (an image of comfort) and gold (a paradoxical image of riches, maturity, spring, and harvest), of surprising rebirth and hope. But that hope and rebirth, for character and "involved reader" alike, remain an open question. In addition, it is worth noting how, in these chapters, Cervantes structures his temporal and spatial settings to underscore his thematics of moral and social exemplarity and, so, to underscore his axiological paradoxy. Don Quixote and Don Diego meet, examine each other and introduce themselves while traveling on horseback. Their common status as "knights" and "horsemen" (caballeros) also provides the first, most evident source of their opposition. Furthermore, Don Quixote has been traveling away from home in search of adventure, whereas Don Diego is on his way home after what is dearly a short trip, or perhaps only a 26. Marquez Villanueva views Dona Cristina as "a piece of furniture that Don Diego acquires in order to bring maximum order and comfort to his home" (una especie de mueble adquirido por don Diego para traer a su casa el m:lximo de orden y comodidad) (1975, 177 n. 46).

"I Know Who 1 Am"

225

stroll In the following chapter, while Don Quixote dismounts in order to await his confrontation with a caged lion in an open field, Don Diego fiees, remaining safely astride his mare, at a considerable distance from potential danger. Don Quixote's "victorious" return and triumphant remarks provoke neither action or reaction, but only humble reflection and more judicious words from Don Diego, for whom a chivalric "adventure" has just become a historical reality. On the one hand, however, it is important to realize that at the literal level of action, Don Quixote's adventure with the lion is more apparent than real. His "heroic deeds" take the absurd form of his "confronting" a lion's hind quarters. On the other hand, his challenge proves ironically heroic and startling in its anticlimax because of what it reveals about the inner qualities of our Silenic hero. The significance, "reality," and "heroism" of this "adventure" are not lost on Don Diego, as shown in his generous invitation, itself revelatory of his Christian, Epicurean ethos: And let us make haste, since it is getting late; and let us go to my village and my home, where you can rest from your recent labors, which, if not of the body, are of the soul, and which are likely to weary the body. (Y demonos priesa, que se hace tarde, y lleguemos a mi aldea y casa, donde descansad. vuestra merced del pasado trabajo, que si no ha sido del cuerpo, ha sido del espiritu, que suele tal vez redundar en cansancio del cuerpo (DQ II: 17, 168; emphasis added) Don Diego's laudatory "deeds" are likewise hidden and spiritual; and they occur in the setting of his home. Furthermore, they are no less "real" than those of Don Quixote. At the level of action alone, such deeds consist of his playing host to Don Quixote and Sancho for four days and his undertaking a respectful conversation with his son. Yet at another level, they reveal a potentially heroic self-transformation. Oddly enough, the potential for such courage and selfreform is shown to be present in his Neoepicurean ethos, but emerges only thanks to his ability to transform and enlarge that ethos according to the demands of experience. 27 Thus the paradoxical admiratio of Cervantes' text 27. It is indeed paradoxical that Cervantes should so portray the compatibility between a radical Christianity, based on heroic virtue, and an Epicurean philosophy; popularly-and wrongly-thought to border on a moral philosophy of hedonism. At; Marquez Villanueva rightly points out, such Christian humanists as the martyr Saint Thomas More found Epicureanism to be the most compatible of all pagan philosophies with Christianity (1975, 171). Thus, the Christian ethics of Cervantes diverges radically from the abstemious hauteur of Neostoicism, as propounded by writers such as Francisco de Quevedo.

226

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

arises from his investing the ambience of Don Quixote's lunacy and nonadventures, as well as the domestic ordinariness of Don Diego's conduct, with hidden wonders or "marvels." It is therefore especially fitting that the enclosed mansion where Don Diego's deeds unfold should remain undescribed, except where its most salient feature of "marvelous," monastic silence is noted. In this regard, the image of the mansion as a monastery appears in a positive light-a symbol in bono. Thus, regarding his "travels" and the manner in which he makes use of both his time and his property, Don Diego represents Don Quixote's obverse reflection, both his opposite and likeness in appearance, word, and deed. More specifically, as reflected in both his person and his home, Don Diego de Miranda displays his laudable capacity for contemplation and wonderment-again appearing strangely like and unlike Don Quixote. But before his encounter with the knight, Don Diego seems to embody the defective traits of personal and social inaction, as well as timid, sedentary conformism. With regard to Don Diego's defects, then, the paradoxical image of the "monastic" mansion betokens the owner's social insularitya symbol in malo. Don Quixote's wisely foolish words and deeds, expressed and enacted before the two men arrive at the mansion, eventually call forth Don Diego's strengths, obliging him to probe his conscience, face his weaknesses, and take his first steps toward self-reform. The third chapter (II, 18) summarizes the events of four days in Don Diego's home. It therefore signals a dramatic shift in narrative setting and greatly reduces the proportion between textual space and the story's presumptive duration. The reader receives no explicit information about how Don Diego reacts to the behavior of Don Quixote during this visit. Yet it seems plausible to claim that the wealthy hidalgo is probably less than pleased about the protagonist's encouraging Lorenzo's literary endeavors, praising the boy as though he deserved to be poet laureate of Spain, and finally urging the youth to forsake his poetry and university studies in order to pursue a career in knight errantry.28 One may easily speculate 28. As even the doubly fictional "voice" of Cide Hamete (a creation of the narrator) "realizes," such adulation may prove an impediment to the self-knowledge of Don Lorenzo: "Is it not fitting that they say that Don Lorenzo took delight in hearing Don Quixote praise him, even though he judged him to be mad? Oh, power of adulation, how far you extend, and how vast the frontiers of your pleasurable dominion!" (iNo es bueno que dicen que se holgo don Lorenzo de verse alabar de don Quijote, aunque Ie tenia por loco? jOh fuerza de la adulacion, a cumto te estiendes, y cum dilatados llmites son los de tu juridicion agradable!) (DQ II: 18, 175). Just before he departs, Don Quixote gives the youth some sound advice in this regard, echoing the prologuist of Part I: "for there is no father or mother for whom their children are ugly, and regarding offspring of the mind we are even more prone to such beguilement" (porque no hay padre ni madre a quien sus hijos Ie parezcan feos, yen los que 10 son del entendimiento corre mas este engafio) (DQI: 18, 177). There is a double irony here, together with a twofold parody of both the protagonist and the narrator, speaking in the "voice" of the Arab historian. First, it is exttemely

"I Know Who 1 Am"

227

that in other ways as well, the protagonist's behavior would have made the master of the household uneasy. Even so, the narrative reports no explicit conflict or disagreement between these two characters. Tellingly, however, Don Quixote is eager to leave the mansion, claiming that idleness and luxury are unfit for a man of his profession. But another clear, if implicit, source of Don Quixote's discomfiture is that he not only starts to enjoy the Epicurean life, but also perceives in Don Diego a disquieting mirror reflection of himself and his own failings. 29 Here, as elsewhere, Don Quixote resists being either startled or lulled into self-examinationinto rethinking his imitatio Amadis. It is from just such a contemplative and domestic "adventure" that Don Quixote chooses to flee. In sum, the temporal and spatial structure of these episodes about a knighterrant and a "knight" complacent-about an encounter between two contrary and complementary characters, their analogous adventures, and their analogous acceptance and rejection of adventure-reinforces the textual interplay between contemplation and action, poetry and history, being and becoming, and self and other. Moreover, the structured openness of the chapters merges the chronotopical, or temporal/spatial, image of Don Quixote's quest on the road with that of Don Diego de Miranda's days spent leisurely (or was it idly?) at home. The incomplete and unfolding tale concerning Don Diego's aporetic crisis of selfknowledge thus holds together opposing images of fixity and flux, harmony and discord, quest and flight, in a paradoxical state of cooperative tension.

Reading the Mirror: The Unexemplary Quest for Heroism, Truth, and Self In the character of Don Diego, Cervantes puts forth his parodic exemplum of a particular kind of moral agent and "idle" or "leisurely" reader. Like the reading odd that the natrator should draw our attention to the problem of self-knowledge only in this most obvious (and probably least perilous) instance, while failing to suggest that this is one of the chief issues affecting the protagonist and pervading the entire chapter. Of course, this reference is also one of the means whereby Cervantes underscores the ethical and aesthetic problem for the reader. Second, as a type of reader and judge akin to the natrator, here assuming the mask of Cide Hamete, Don Quixote fails to realize that his advice applies most tellingly to his own case; for, as Don Quixote, he is the "ugly" lunatic "son" of his own poetic understanding. At; two embodiments of a literalist doxa, both the natrator and Don Quixote ate portrayed as rather insufferable preachers, adept at seeing the mote in another person's eye. 29. In his elegant atticle, Randolph Pope (1979, 207-18) atgues that, while visiting the Mirandas, Don Quixote feels tempted by wealth and comfort to forsake his heroic quest. Yet it seems to me that the "temptation" atising here is less to wealth and comfort than to the "deadly sin" of envy towatd Don Diego.

228

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

and writing of Cervantes' narrative, Don Diego's ethical progress in self-knowledge will continue to depend on his aesthetic refashioning of historical and literary models, including the historicopoetic model of Don Quixote. In other words, it will depend on Don Diego's commitment to enlarging, through inventio and critical reflection, the logical and semantic categories that govern the rhetoric of those models, or those "texts." In particular, Don Diego's potential for growth in virtue, which he has yet to live to an "heroic degree," would depend on whether he chose to pursue a quest for self-knowledge. Such a quest would entail a laudably social form of self-love and learned ignorance, because purged of selfreferential pride, self-preference, conformism, and pseudomonastic isolation from the "other," or the opposite, within himself. As a paradoxical exemplum of readers and moral agents, and of readers as moral agents, Don Diego discovers the limited power of our codes, of fictions, or of the artifice of discourse to make sense of experience or define our individual and collective lives. His scrutinizing the paradox that Don Quixote offers in appearance, word, and deed incites Don Diego to reflective wonder and "alienates" or detaches him, in an example of logical paradox, from the terms that define his semiotic system or ethos. In a practical fashion, he learns from Don Quixote's example that those systems deriving from the poetic imagination can achieve only a partial stay against our confusion and perplexity. And the "alienating" effect which the character called Don Quixote produces in Don Diego provides an analogue of the effect, or the admiratio, that the fiction called Don Quixote seems designed to produce in its readers. Nonetheless, as Don Diego discovers from his reflecting on the paradox of Don Quixote, and as the reader discovers from his or her negotiating the paradoxes of Cervantes' textual maze, codes of limited yet real power, and partial stays against the confusion of experience remain infinitely superior to the darkness, discord, and chaos that would result from an absence of logical and semantic codes. In Mexia's phrase, our lacking the art of our codes, fictions, or semiotic systems would lead all human activity and knowledge to end in "confusion and forgetting." Consequently, the narrative links Don Diego's paradoxical "exemplarity" to his remaining unfinished, both ethically and aesthetically, and his continually beckoning toward ethical and aesthetic completion. Don Diego becomes laudable and exemplary to the degree that he recognizes his insufficiency and rejects the status of finished exemplar. Within Cervantes' innovative rhetoric of moral and poetic exemplarity, which makes virtue or "heroism" inseparable from deficiency, Don Diego comes to exemplifY an innovative form of prudence and fortitude. For he would rather observe and listen, in reflective

"I Know Who 1 Am"

229

silence, to an opposing view than suppress, or silence, such a challenge to his formerly untested assumptions. On the one hand, then, Don Diego's attitude compares favorably with the unreflective complacency and spiritual cowardice expressed in the un-Socratic adage "I know who I am" and in the quest-as-flight that doom the knight to self-defeat. fu Cervantes' narrative progressively reveals, the fixity and antinomy-the wholly internal reference and self-contained quality-of Don Quixote's selffiguration come to deprive him of semantic and social space. His unswerving commitment to a rigid code and to an ethos of life-as-discourse ensnares him in a vicious circle of contradictions, misadventures and rebuffs. His archetypal pretensions render him a victim of his own art, a fool fooled, or a variation of "the trickster tricked" (burlador burlado). In contrast to Don Diego's attitude of selfexamination, Don Quixote's increasing failure to reconcile experience with the fixities of his code provides little occasion for reflective wonder or reassessment, but serves only to increase his chronic melancholy. In part, Don Quixote represents the reductio ad absurdum of readers, authors and texts that equate "truth," not with a quest, but with aprioristic certainty or formulaic closure. On the other hand, Don Diego's habit of playing it safe, in a spirit of "prudent" conformism, compares unfavorably with the heroic excess that leads Don Quixote to confront the literal and symbolic lion, and likewise to persevere, with unbroken fidelity, in his mission and his service to Dulcinea. In the face of danger and contradiction, our hero courageously pursues his absurd project to its absurd end, thus letting the "knight's" defeat yield to the hidalgo's triumph and self-conquest. Thanks to his historicopoetic personalities, our fully Silenic protagonist finds success and, indeed, "salvation" in apparent failure. His mad enterprise provides the medium for his attainment of "heroic virtue," since the personality called Don Quixote constitutes the only "heroic" part of the moribund Alonso Quixano, at the end of the tale, and the only part of our formerly homebound protagonist that allows him to perform and share his real "virtues." Thanks to the transformative "mercies of God," our hero's insane, chivalric career comes to mark his path to "eternal glory" in a manner that infinitely exceeds the fantasies that motivated our crazed hidalgo at the start of Part I. fu an inventive imitatio of the "holy fool," the specifically Pauline or Franciscan "fool for Christ" and Folly's children who attain divinitas in Erasmus' paradoxical encomium, our hero comes to represent, in his moment of death, the seeming oxymoron of lunacy beatified, or an extreme, Cervantine refashioning of folly praised. In short, both Don Diego and Don Quixote emerge from the narrative as Silenic figures and each of them acts as a mirror for the other. They shape their

230

Inventing a Tale, Inventing a Self

"lives" after contrary yet complementary codes. In the realm of action, they reveal complementary fOrms of cowardice and heroism, just as they reveal complementary forms of wisdom and folly in the realm of thought and expression, or knowledge, selfknowledge, and discourse. Neither of them cuts a straightforward, "exemplary figure." And neither ultimately proves deserving, without qualification, of an epithet such as "the Good." More self-consciously, however, the dialectical encounter in these chapters between Don Diego de Miranda and Don Quixote encapsulates the reader's encounter with Cervantes' Silenic fiction-as-history, ingeniously crafted to resist closure and mirror its potentially idle or active readers. As shown rather than preached in Cervantes' narrative, an openness to paradox engenders a sense of communion between self and other in a common quest for truth. But that quest pursues a necessarily elusive and unfolding truth-about an evolving yet "real" self, other, society, or world. Don Quixote dramatizes the degree to which that "truth," or the Truth-as-One, lies forever in the future, infinite(yapproachable or knowable in itself, yet surpassing the limits of time and history and the terms of our consoling fictions. Particularly in these chapters, Cervantes' work depicts seemingly ordinary encounters between self and other, or between reader, text, and life, as potential encounters with the marvelous: est Deus in nobis. Hence, such encounters provide no occasion for final certainty. Instead, they call for reflection in the face of unfolding mystery, and for the continuing action of mutual self-fashioning, dialogue, and self-renewal.

Concluding Remarks

It is now a commonplace of literary studies to cite Don Quixote as the forerunner of the modern and contemporary novel. And in my view, among the most perceptive observations on that subject is the following assertion by Robert Alter: "The novel begins out of an erosion of belief in the authority of the written word and it begins with Cervantes" (1975,3).1 Nonetheless, a possible inference of the preceding study is that in Don Quixote, Cervantes effects an "erosion of belief" that hardly seems confined to "the written word." As both a synthesis and refashioning of Western paradoxy, the text invites readers to question the "authority" of all human discourse (historical, poetic, oral, or written) that shapes those constructs we call knowledge and history. 1. Parr's elegant and witty Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (1988) argues that Cervantes' satire of the written word in Don Quixote goes to the extreme of subverting and desacralizing Holy Writ.

232

Concluding Remarks

Even if one may justifiably balk at defining its "purpose," an unsettling effect of paradoxy in Don Quixote arises from the drama it creates of discourse undoing its own "authority," or exposing its own fictiveness, and thus revealing through countless examples how deceptively art masquerades as nature, literature as life, or "telling" as "being." Such is the effect of Cervantes' "story" transparently masquerading as "history" and, perhaps less transparently, of the mutual masquerade involving historical and poetic discourse in both the Prologue and title page to Part I. Such also is the effect in the main narrative of such parodic characters as the protagonist, Cardenio, Gines de Pasamonte and the youths of the "Feigned Arcadia" who openly shape their "historical" actions after poetic models. But categories of thought and expression likewise exemplify their own fictiveness in Don Quixote through less parodic characters such as the Captive and Zoraida, whose "lives" seem unwittingly to imitate fictional discourse in the form of a Moorish novel. Moreover, through the verbal medium of Cervantes' text, human discourse exposes its inherent deceitfulness or lack of moral authority through such characters as the "noble" duke and duchess, their subjects, and Sans6n Carrasco in Part II. In the first place, as readers of Cide Hamete's history, in Part I, and as the protagonist's true enemy "enchanters," these individuals both lie and enact their lies in an effort to gain authorial control over the knight's elaborate fiction, the better to use him as their character or plaything and thus entertain themselves at that knight's, or their "fool's," expense. Further, these characters' words and deeds alike expose the inability of discursive categories in thought or language-the most careful plans or authoritative pronouncements-to accommodate the ultimately unfathomable variety of "nature" or "life." As ingenious variations on the top os of the trickster tricked (burlador burlado), these fictional persons unwittingly imitate the protagonist by becoming ensnared as characters within his and their own fictions, trapped by his and their own language, or victims of his and their own art.2 And from yet another perspective, exposing the unfounded "authority" of discourse is also the effect of how Cervantes characterizes the seemingly exemplary Don Diego de Miranda, content to model his life after commonplaces deriving from works of moral philosophy or Christian piety. Yet, finally, I would contend that undermining the "authority" and exposing the masquerade of discourse remains integral to the purpose of an author, implied by the text, whose self-undermining discourse creates the illusion of receding depths and of more or less original sources, imitations or models for the "true history" we 2. Ruth El Saffar, in her groundbreaking study titled Distance and Control (1975), was the first to analyze in detail how characters in Don Quixote lose authorial control over, and distance from, their own fictions.

Concluding Remarks

233

are "now reading." For it is the same, textually implied author who "speaks" primarily through the voice of his narrator, a fictional "author," in turn represented as using discourse to beget the "lie" of an Arab source that will lend "authority" to his "history." Cervantes thus extends Guevara's use of historical "spoof," or what I have termed icastic fantasy, in order to create the Aristotelian contradiction of historical poesis. So what Alter rightly calls the "self-conscious genre" of the novel would seem to begin with Cervantes' purposeful conflation of historical and poetic discourse. Or put another way, it would seem to begin with his conflation of "stories" and "histories" engaging in mutual parody and self-parody, and his thus provoking an erosion of belief in the authority of the word. However, to view the paradoxy of Don Quixote as a discursive act of "subversion" that begins and ends in an "erosion" seems to be, in every sense, only part of the story. Indeed, I would contend that both the purpose and effect of Cervantes' paradoxical discourse in Don Quixote consist of creating a feast of discourse through an act of narrative rhypography that celebrates and extols humanity's place in the middest. In view of this study's preceding discussion, Cervantes' fiction emerges as a dramatized mock encomium of "the word" (razones, logoi), or a mixed, cornucopian satire within the multigeneric, Menippean tradition aiming at homo significans, or "man" the symbolic, signifYing animal. And the symbolic quality and animality of that paradoxical creature remain, in Cervantes' text, of equal importance. For the spirit animating Cervantes' paradoxy, or his parody of discourse, differs sharply from the urge of his protagonist to decry and seek liberation from the contingencies of social intercourse, time and matter, including the matter of one's own body. Just as parody in Don Quixote achieves more than what the friend of the Prologue calls an "invective" against the "authority and sway" of its historical and poetic models, so that fiction's paradoxy achieves more than an invective against the authority of the word. For if both Don Quixote and Don Quixote jointly come forth as nothing less than a mock encomium of poetic and historical discourse, that "encomium" provokes an equal measure of praise, censure, admiratio, and laughter. The effect, and most likely the purpose, of Cervantes' self-conscious mock encomium is at once metafictional, metahistorical, and metadiscursive. Its purpose and effect consist, in other words, of provoking "alienation" or critical reflection on the logical and linguistic categories of received opinion (doxa). Beginning with a Prologue and title page in which historical and poetic discourse exchange their "masks," Cervantes creates a fiction that absorbs and transforms the "facts" of its own history as an empirical text. He creates a fiction that tirelessly exposes, varies, and celebrates the masquerade of art as nature, literature as life, and of "telling" as "being" and "truth." It is also

234

Concluding Remarks

beginning with the Prologue that Cervantes dramatizes and thematizes not only the "common" paradoxes of art in nature, or literature in life, but also the more startling paradox that "nature," "life," "being," and "truth" must pass through the fictive categories of discursive imitation in order "to appear," or in order to be continually discovered, refashioned, and, in that way, rediscovered. Moreover, because it assumes the viciously circular structure of a dramatized mock encomium aiming at human discourse, the author's fiction manages to exploit simultaneously all the types and topical strains of Renaissance paradoxy that I sought to classifY in the opening pages of Chapter 3. Against the most common assumptions (para-doxa) about language, thought, truth, the "cosmos," and the self, both the form and content of Don Quixote serve to dramatize the "startling truth" that every utterance in either the historical or poetic mode is an act of imitation. Hence, the text exemplifies that one may truthfolly recast every such utterance in the baffling rather than simply negative terms of a prototypical "antinomy": "This statement is false." That possible recasting holds for any statement that one may choose to utter about the "truth" of history, which reaches us only by means of fragments riven with error, bias, and mendacity, as dramatized explicitly in the narration relating the "discovery" of Cide Hametes's manuscript. The fiction self-consciously uses historical and poetic discourse both for and against themselves (logical paradoxy). It thus invites us to reevaluate rather than simply negate the discursive categories and semiotic systems whereby we judge matters such as sanity, madness, fact, fiction, the laudable, or the base (axiological paradoxy). Further, Don Quixote dramatizes that, by means of the same, fictive categories, we attempt "to know" and utter "true" propositions about what are shown to be a protean world and a protean self that unfold in time as a continuing dialectic between act and potency, being and nonbeing, likeness and unlikeness, or self and other (cosmological and psychological paradoxy). And as a mock encomium of discourse, Don Quixote offers a poetic imitation which contains and fails to contain imitations of imitations within imitations, all deriving from rival semiotic systems or doxa. As a fictional analogue of the imitations constituting "life," the fiction's discourse creates a finite emblem of the incomprehensible and the infinite. For that discourse simulates how in life and literature alike, the countless imitations deriving from discursive categories unfold as a via negativa, or an endless, negative assertion of the unfathomable "Truth-asOne." But Cervantes' mock encomium of discourse also presents a Ciceronian paradox, or what we may call a committed rhetoric, with ethical as well as aesthetic implications. Cervantes' fiction about a protagonist who strives to imitate a particular type of poetic discourse represents the particular imitatio that we know as "discourse"

Concluding Remarks

235

less as a series of "words" (dichos) than of deeds (hechos). To be sure, the madness of the protagonist places his deeds outside the realm of moral culpability. Not so, however, with the narrative voices and other characters in the fiction who are likewise defined by their discourse and often by the deceitfol fictions that they choose to create. Although, to paraphrase the narrator's words in the Prologue to Part I, we are known to possess "free will" or our "souls in our bodies," the fiction represents that it finally lies beyond our power to choose whether "life" will entail imitations derived from models and our discursive categories. Rather, from the opening words of its fictional Prologue, the text dramatizes how our power of choice first seems to consist of whether we shall undertake our life-as-imitatio (as we undertake our "inventive" reading of the text itself) in a manner that is "leisured" yet self-aware or uncritical and "idle." In addition, our power of choice is shown to consist of how we respond, fail to respond, or refuse to respond to the aporia created by the protagonist and the "history," which move many of the fiction's characters to admiratio or, in the narrator's phrase, "great silence"

(silencio grande). The aping method of "perfect imitation," as espoused and counseled by the narrator's "comical" friend in the Prologue of 1605, seems accurately to describe the ethos of most characters in the fiction who, like the protagonist and the narrator himself, act "without questioning the words" (sin ponerlas [razonesl en disputa) that configure their verbal and nonverbal deeds. An altogether different species of imitatio seems to inform the author's poetic "deed" of aesthetic refashioning and enlargement through discourse. It seems hardly accidental that such an author should represent uncritical imitation of a "code" or "poetic truth" in a particular form as the measure of folly, and insanity, in his fiction. For, on the one hand, such intellectually "idle" folly is shown to blind one to the generally unyielding constraints of time, space, matter, and even (in the case of Don Quixote) such bodily needs as eating and sleeping. On the other hand, that "idle" folly is also shown to blind one to the less unyielding, though no less "real," constraints of prevailing systems in discourse and to the social and cultural arrangements that those systems bring about. The author's fiction seems to invite our reflection on the possibilities for personal and collective inventiveness that lie hidden within "nature," ourselves, and existing "models." It is hardly incidental to Cervantes' fiction, I believe, that the discourse, rhetoric, and poetics of Don Quixote should praise the "folly" of how we use our discourse to fashion a life that is specifically human. And it hardly seems incidental to Cervantes' self-conscious paradoxy that Don Quixote should encourage a continuing sense of wonder in the face of ethical and aesthetic projects (knowledge, truth, history, or oneself) that promise to remain both possible and unfinished.

WORKS CITED

Albrecht, James, ed. 1975. A Treasury of Prayers. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Scepter Press. Aleman, Mateo. 1983. Guzman de Alfarache. Edited by Francisco Rico. 1599, 1602. Barcelona: Planeta. Allen, John J. 1969-79. Don Quixote: Hero or Fool? 2 vols. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Alter, Roben. 1975. Partial Magic: The Novel as Se/fComcious Genre. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Aristotle. 1982. Poetics. Translated by James Hutton. New York: Norton. - - - . 1985. Nichomachean Ethics. Translated by Terrence Irwin. New York: Hackett. Auerbach, Erich. 1957. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in W't>stern Literature. Translated by Willard Trask. New York: Doubleday. Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista. 1976. "Don Quijote" como forma de vida. Valencia: Editorial Castalia. Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista, and Edward C. Riley, eds. 1973. Suma cervantina. London: Tamesis. Azar, Ines. 1988. "The Archeology of Fiction in Don Quijote." Cervantes, special issue (Winter):

117-26. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helen Iswolsky. Cambridge: MIT Press. - - - . 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bifiez, Domingo. 1966. The Primacy ofExistence in Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Benjamin S. Llanzon. 1584. Chicago: Henry Regnery. Barilli, Renato. 1989. Rhetoric. Translated by Giuliana Menozzi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barthes, Roland. 1986. S/Z New York: Hill and Wang. - - - . 1989. "The Discourse of History." In The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard, 127-40. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Barwise, John, and John Etchemendy. 1987. The Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity. New York: Oxford University Press. Bataillon, Marcel. 1961. ''La Celestine" selon Fernando de Rojas. Paris: Didier. - - - . 1966. Erasmo y Espana. Translated by A. Alatorre. Mexico: Colegio de Mexico. - - - . 1971. "Un probleme d'influence d'Erasme en Espagne: LEloge de la Folie." In Actes du Congres Erasme, 1969,136-47. Amsterdam: Academie Royale Neerlandis. Bates, Margaret. 1945. ''Discreci6n'' in the Works of Cervantes. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

238

Works Cited

Buceta, Erasmo. 1935. "Introduccion." In Paradoxas racionales, by Anronio Lopez de Vega, edited by Erasmo Buceta, vi-xliii. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Historicos, Revista de Filologia Hispanica. Burckhardt, Jakob. 1950. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. 1860. New York: Phaidon. Burgess, Thedore C. 1902. Epideictic Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, Richmond, and Lanning Sowden, eds. 1985. Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner's Dilemma and Mewcomb's Problem. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Canavaggio, Jean. 1958. "Alonso Lopez Pinciano y la eS£(~tica literaria de Cervantes en el Quijote." Anales Cervantinos 7: 13-1 07. - - - . 1977. "Cervantes en primera persona." Journal of Hispanic Philology 2:35-44. Cano, Melchor. 1962. "Tratado de la vicroria de si mismo." In Tratados espirituales. Edited by Vicente Beltran de Heredia. 1547. Madrid: Editorial Catolica. Cargile, James. 1979. Paradoxes: A Study in Form and Predication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Caro Baroja, Julio. 1965. EI carnaval- andlisis hist6rico-cultural Madrid: Taurus. Cas a, Frank. 1968. "Pleberio's Lament for Melibea." ZeitschriJt for Romanische Philologie 84:19-29. Casalduero, Joaquin. 1970. Sentido y forma del "Quijote." Madrid: Insula. Cassirer, Ernst. 1963 The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy. Translated by Mario Domandi. New York: Harper & Row. Casirrer, Ernst, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall. 1950. The Renaissance Philosophy ofMan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Castillo, Carlos. 1945. "Cervantes y Pero Mexia." Modern Philology 43:94-106. Castro, Americo. 1965. "La Celestina" como contienda literaria. Madrid: Revista de Occidente. ---.1967. Hacia Cervantes. Madrid: Taurus. - - - . 1972. EI pemamiento de Cervantes. 1925. Barcelona: Editorial Noguer. - - - . 1974. Cervantes y los casticismos espafioles. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Castro, Antonio. 1989. "Introduccion." In Silva de varia lecci6n, by Pero Mexia, edited by Antonio Castro. 2 vols., 1.1-137. Madrid: Citedra. Cave, Terence. 1979. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. 1973. Viaje del Parnaso. Edited by Vicente Gaos. Madrid: Castalia. - - - . 1978. EI ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. 2 vols. Edited by Luis Andres Murillo. Madrid: Castalia. - - - . 1985. Novelas ejemplares. 2 vols. Edited by Harry Sieber. 1613. Madrid: Citedra. Chamberlain, V. A., and Jack Weiner. 1969. "Color Symbolism: A Key to a Possible Interpretation of Cervantes' 'Caballero del Verde Gaban.'" Romance Notes 10:1-6. Chambers, Leland. 1981. "Harmonia est Discordia Concors: The Coincidence of Opposites and Unity in Diversity in the Quijote." In Cervantes, su obra y su mundo: Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Cervantes, edited by Manuel Criado del Val, 605-15. Madrid: EDI-6. Champlin, T. S. 1988. Reflexive Paradoxes. New York: Routledge. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. 1931. St. Francis ofAssisi. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Cicero. 1953. Paradoxa Stoicorum. Edited by A. G. Lee. London: Macmillan. Clarke, Dorothy C. 1968. Allegory, Decalogue, and Deadly Sim in "La Celestina." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Close, Anthony. 1978. The Romantic Approach to "Don Quixote." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Works Cited

239

1990a. "Constructive Testimony: Patronage and Recognition in Don Quixote." In Conflicts of Discourse, edited by Peter W. Evans. Manchester: Manchester University Press. - - - . 1990b. Don Quixote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - - - . 1993. ''A Poet's Vanity." Cervantes 13:31-63. Colie, Rosalie. 1966. Paradoxia Epidemica. Princeton: Princeron University Press. Concejo, Pilar. 1985. Antonio de Guevara: un emayista del siglo XVI. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica. Coplesron, Frederick. 1972. History ofMedieval Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. - - - . 1985. A History of Philosophy. 9 vols. 1946-74. New York: Doubleday. Corominas, Joan. 1954. Diccionario critico etimo16gico de la lengua castellana. Bern: Editorial Francke. Covarrubias, Sebastian de. 1984. Tesoro de la lengua Castellana 0 Espanola. 1611. Madrid: Ediciones Turner. Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1973. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Willard Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - - - . 1990. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeron University Press. Dawson, Christopher. 1938. Progress and Religion: An Historical Inquiry. New York: Sheed and Ward. - - - . 1965. The Dividing of Christendom. New York: Sheed and Ward. - - - . 1985. Christianity and the New Age. Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute. del Rio, Angel. 1959. "El equfvoco del Quijote." Hispanic Review 27:201-21. Derrida, Jaques. 1981. Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Deyermond, A. D. 1961. The Petrarchan Sources of ''La Celestina. " Oxford: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1971. A Literary History of Spain: The Middle Ages. New York: Barnes & Noble. Dijk, Theun van. 1974. ''Action, Action Description, and Narrative." Poetics 5:287-338. Donne, John. 1980 Paradoxes and Problems. Edited by Helen Peters. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dunn, Peter. 1975. Fernando de Rojas. Boston: Twayne. - - . 1976. "Pleberio's World." PMLA 91:406-19. ---.1982. "Cervantes DelRe-Constructs rhe Picaresque." Cervantes2:109-31. Duran, Manuel. 1960. La ambigaedad en el "Quijote. " Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana. Eco, Umberto. 1986. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. Translated by Hugh Bredin. New Haven: Yale University Press. - - - . 1994. The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. - - - . 1995. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Efron, Arthur. 1971. ''Don Quixote" and the Dulcineated World. Austin: University of Texas Press. Egido, Aurora. 1991. "Los silencios del Persiles." In On Cervantes: Essays for L. A. Murillo, edited by James Parr. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Eisenberg, Daniel. 1982. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. - - - . 1983. "El 'Bernardo' de Cervantes fue su libro de caballerfas." Anales Cervantinos 21:103-17. - - - . 1987. A Study of ''Don Quixote." Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. El Saffar, Ruth. 1968. "The Function of the Fictional Narraror in Don Quijote." MLN 83:164-77.

240

Works Cited

- - - . 1975. Distance and Control in ''Don Quixote." Chapel Hill, N.C.: North Carolina Institute. Elliott, J. H. 1990. Imperial Spain. London: Penguin. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1964. The ''Adages'' of Erasmus. Translated by Margaret Mann Phillips. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - - - . 1974. The Praise of Folly. Edited and translated by Hoyt Hopewell Hudson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - - - . 1979. The Praise of Folly. Edited and translated by Clarence H. Miller. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fajardo, Salvador. 1994. "The Prologue to Don Quixote l" Journal ofInterdisciplinary Literary Studies 6:1-17. Flew, Anrhony. 1979. A Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: St. Martin's Press. Forcione, Alban K. 1970. Cervantes, Aristotle, and the ''Persiles.'' Princeron: Princeron University Press. - - - . 1982. Cervantes and the Humanist Vision. Princeron: Princeton University Press. - - - . 1984. Cervantes and the Mystery ofLawlessness. Princeron: Princeton University Press. Francis of Assisi, Saint. 1972. Writings and Early Biographies. Edited by Alphonse Habig. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. Frye, Northrop. 1973. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeron: Princeton University Press. Gallardo, Bartolome Jose. 1863-69. Emayo de una biblioteca de libros raros y curiosos. Madrid. Gaylord, Mary. 1982. "The Language of Limits and the Limits of Language: The Crisis of Poetry in La Galatea. "MLN97:254-71. - - - . 1986. "Cervantes' Portraits and Literary Theory in the Text of Fiction." Cervantes 6:57-80. - - - . 1991. "Fair of rhe World, Fair of rhe Word: The Commerce of Language in La Celestina." Revista de Estudios Hispdnicos 25:43-58. Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. - - - . 1993. Fiction and Diction. Translated by Janet E. Lewin. Irhaca: Cornell University Press. Gibbs, J. 1960. Vida de Antonio de Guevara. Valladolid: Editorial Mifi6n. Gilman, Stephen. 1953. "Di:i1ogo y estilo en La Celestina." Nueva Revista de Filologla Hispdnica 7:461-69. - - - . 1956. The Art of ''La Celestina. " Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. - - - . 1972. The Spain of Fernando de Rojas. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gingras, Gerald. 1985. "Diego de Miranda, 'Buf6n' or Spanish Genrleman? The Social Background of His Attire." Cervantes 5: 129-40. G6mez, Jesus. 1988. EI didlogo en el renacimiento espafioL Madrid: Catedra. Grant, Helen F. 1972. "El mundo al reves." In Hispanic Studies in Honour ofJoseph Mamon, edited by D. M. Atkinson and A. H. Clarke, 119-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1973. "The World Upside-Down." In Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age, edited by R. O. Jones, 103-6. London: Tamesis. Grassi, Ernesto, and Lorch, Maristella. 1986. Folly and Imanity in Renaissance Literature. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Green, Otis H. 1957. "£1 ingenioso hidalgo." Hispanic Review 25:175-93. - - - . 1960-63. Spain and the western Tradition. 4 vols. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1980. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Greene, Thomas M. 1982. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Works Cited

241

Grey, Ernest. 1973. Guevara, A Forgotten Renaissance Author. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Guevara, Antonio de. 1984. Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea. Edited by Asunci6n Rallo. Madrid: Citedra. Guillen, Claudio. 1988. El primer siglo de oro: Estudios sobre generos y modelos. Barcelona: Editorial Cdtica. Gutierrez, Constancio. 1951. Espafioles en Trento. Simancas: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientfficas. Habig, Marion Alphonse, ed. 1972. Francis ofAssisi: Writings and Early Biographies. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. Haley, George. 1965. "The Narrator in Don Quijote: Maese Pedro's Puppet Show." MLN 80:146-65. - - - . 1984. "The Narrator in Don Quijote: A Discarded Voice," In Estudios en honor a Ricardo Gul16n, edited by L. Gonzilez del Valle and D. Villanueva, 173-85. Lincoln, Neb.: Society of Spanish and Spanish American Studies. Hamburger, Kate. 1973. The Logic of Literature. Translated by Marilyn Rose. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hampton, Timothy. 1990. Writingfrom History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hankins, James. 1991. Plato in the Italian Renaissance. New York: E. J. Brill. Hatzfeld, Helmut. 1966. El "Quijote" como obra de arte del lenguaje. Madrid: Imprenta Aguirre. Huizinga, Johan. 1950. The Waning of the Middle Ages. London: Edward Arnold. - - - . 1957. Erasmus and the Age of Reformation. New York: Harper & Row. - - - . 1970. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Hutcheon, Linda. 1980. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Hutchinson, Steven. 1992. Cervantine Journeys. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ihre, Maureen. 1982. Skepticism in Cervantes. London: Tamesis Books. Iser, Wolfgang. 1987. The Act of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Johnson, Carroll B. 1983. Madness and Lust: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Don Quixote. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. - - - . 1990. "Don Quijote": The Quest for Modern Fiction. Boston: Twayne. Jones, Joseph R. 1975. Antonio de Guevara. Boston: Twayne. - - - . 1986. "The Liar Paradox in Don Quixote II, 51." Hispanic Review 54:183-93. Kahn, Victoria. 1985. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kaiser, Walter. 1963. Praisers ofFolly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kamen, Henry. 1983. Spain: 1467-1714. New York: Longman. Keen, Maurice. 1968. MedievalEurope. Middlesex, England: Penguin. Kelley, Donald R. 1991. Renaissance Humanism. Boston: Twayne. Kerrigan, William, and Gordon Braden. 1991. The Idea of the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kermode, Frank. 1967. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford University Press. Kinney, Arthur F. 1989. Continental Humanist Poetics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts. Klibansky, Raymond. 1939. The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition. London: Warburg Institute. - - - . 1943. "Plato's Parmenides in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance." Medieval and

Renaissance Studies 1:281-330. Klubertanz, George P. 1960. St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Knowles, David. 1962. The Evolution ofMedieval Thought. New York: Random House.

242

Works Cited

Koons, Richard C. 1991. Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Ri1tionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1961. Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Straim. New York: Harper & Row. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, and Ernst Cassirer, eds. 1967. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lathrop, Thomas A. 1988. "Who Is the Narrator in Don Quijote?" In Hispanic Studies in Honor ofjoseph H Silverman, edited by Joseph Ricapito, 297-304. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Lausberg, Heinrich. 1975. Elementos de ret6rica literaria: introducci6n al estudio de laftlologia cidsica, romdnica, inglesa. Madrid: Gredos. Levao, Ronald. 1985. Renaissance Minds and Their Fictions. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Levin, Harry. 1969. "The Example of Cervantes." In Cervantes: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Lowry Nelson, 38-48. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Lida de Malkiel, Marfa Rosa. 1945. "Fray Antonio de Guevara: Edad media y siglo de oro espaiiola." Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 7:346-88. - - - . 1962. La originalidad artistica de "La Celestina." Buenos Aires: Eudeba. - - - . 1970. Dos obras maestras espafiolas: ''Ellibro de Buen Amor" y ''La Celestina. "Buenos Aires: Eudeba. L6pez de Vega, Anronio. 1935. Paradoxas racionales. Edited by Erasmo Buceta. 1643. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Hist6ricos, Revista de Filologfa Espaiiola. L6pez Pinciano, Alonso. 1969. Philosophia antigua poetica. Edited by Alfredo Carballo Picazo. 1596. Madrid: CSIC. Lyons, John D., and Stephen D. Nichols, eds. 1982. Mimesis: Mirror to Method. Hanover: University Press of New England. McGaha, Michael, ed. 1980. Cervantes and the Renaissance. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Mcinerny, Ralph. 1996. Aquinas and Analogy. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. McPheeters, D. W. 1954. "The Element of Fatality in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. " Symposium 8:331-35. Madariaga, Salvador de. 1978. Guia del lector del "Quijote." 1947. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Maiorino, Giancarlo. 1990. The Cornucopian Mind. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Mancing, Howard. 1981. "Cide Hamete Benengeli vs. Miguel de Cervantes: The Metafictional Dialectic of Don Quijote. " Cervantes 1:63-81. - - - . 1982. The Chivalric World of ''Don Quijote": Style, Structure, and Narrative Technique. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Marichal, Juan. 1984. Teoria e historia del ensayismo espafiol Madrid: Alianza Edirorial. Mariscal, George. 1991. Contradictory Subjects: Quevedo, Cervantes, and Seventeenth-Century Spanish Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Martin, Adrienne Laskier. 1991. Cervantes and the Burlesque Sonnet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Martin, Francisco J. 1993. "Los pr610gos del Quijote. la consagraci6n de un genero." Cervantes 13:77-87. Martinez Bonati, Felix. 1992. ''Don Quixote" and the Poetics of the Novel. Translated by Dian Fox. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Marquez Villanueva, Francisco. 1968. Espiritualidad y literatura en el siglo XVI Madrid: Alfaguara. - - - . 1973. Fuentes literarias cervantinas. Madrid: Gredos.

Works Cited

243

- - - . 1975. Temas y personajes del "Quijote." Madrid: Gredos. - - - . 1980. "La locura emblematica en la segunda parte del Quijote." In Cervantes and the Renaissance, edited by Michael McGaha, 87-112. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Martin, Robert L. 1970. The Paradox of the Liar. New Haven: Yale University Press. - - - . 1984. Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mexia, Pero. n.d. Didlogos del ilustre cavallero Pero Mexia. 1547. Madrid: Compafiia IberoAmericana de Publicaciones. - - - . 1989. Silva de varia lecci6n. 2 vols. Edited by Antonio Castro. 1540. Madrid: Citedra. Miller, Clarence. 1979. Introduction to The Praise of Folly, by Erasmus. ix-xxv. New Haven: Yale University Press. Miller, Henty Knight. 1956. "The Paradoxical Encomium." Modern Philology 53:145-78. Molho, Mauricio. 1989. "Instancias narradoras en Don Quijote." MLN105:273-85. Mor6n Arroyo, Ciriaco. 1973. "Sobre el diaIogo y sus funciones literarias." Hispanic Review 41:275-84. - - - . 1976. Nuevas meditaciones del "Quijote." Madrid: Gredos. Murillo, Luis. 1959. "Dialogo y dialectica en el siglo XVI espanol." Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires 4:55-66. ---.1980. "Don Quixote as Renaissance Epic." McGaha 51-70. - - - . 1988. A Critical Introduction to "Don Quixote." New York: Peter Lang. Murphy, James J., ed. 1983. A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric. Davis: University of California Press. Nauert, Charles. 1995. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nepaulsingh, Colbert. 1980. "La aventura de los narradores del Quijote." In Actas del Sexto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, edited by Alan M. Gordon and Evelyn Rugg, 515-18. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nicholas Cusanus. 1986. Of Learned Ignorance. Translated by Germain Heron. 1440. New Haven: Yale University Press. Olin, John C. 1979. Six Essays on Erasmus. New York: Fordham University Press. Orozco Dfaz, Emilio. 1970. Manierismo y barroco. Salamanca: Ediciones Anaya. - - - . 1988. Introducci6n al barroco. 2 vols. Ed. Jose Lara Garrido. Granada: Universidad de Granada. Ortega y Gasset, Jose. 1984. Meditaciones del "Quijote." Edited by Julian Marias. Madrid: Catedra. Parker, Alexander A. 1948. "El concepto de la verdad en el Quijote." Revista de Filologia Espanola 32:287-305. - - - . 1985. The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature: 1480-1680. Edited by Terence O'Reilly. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Parr, James. 1984. "Extrafictional Point of View in Don Quixote." In Studies on "Don Quixote" and Other Cervantine Works, edited by Donald R. Bleznick. York, S.c.: Spanish Literature Publications. - - - . 1988. Anatomy of Subversive Discourse. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Parsons, Charles. 1974. "The Liar Paradox." Journal of Philosophical Logic 3:381-412. Pease, Arthur S. 1926. "Things Without Honor." Classical Philology 21:27-42. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1987. Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in History and Culture. New York: Harper & Row. Percas de Ponseti, Helena. 1975. Cervantes y su concepto del arte. 2 vols. Madrid: Gredos. - - - . 1988. Cervantes the Writer and Painter of "Don Quijote." Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

244

Works Cited

Peters, Helen. 1980. "General Introduction." In Paradoxes and Problems, by John Donne, edited by Helen Peters, xvi-xlix. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pieper, Jose£ 1963. Leisure as the Basis of Culture. New York: Random House. - - - . 1966. The Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Plato. 1973. The Republic and Other WOrks. Translated by B. Jowett. New York: Doubleday. Porqueras Mayo, Albeno. 1957. El prologo como genero literario: Su estudio en el siglo de oro espafiol Madrid: CSIC. - - - . 1968. El prologo en el manierismo y barroco espafioles. Madrid: CSIC. - - - . 1981. "En torno a los prologos de Cervantes." In Cervantes, su obra y su mundo: Actos del I congreso sobre Cervantes, edited by Manuel Criado del Val. Madrid: EDI-6. Pope, Randolph. 1979. "El Caballero del Verde Gaban y su encuentro con Don Quijote." Hispanic Review 47:207-18. Predmore, Richard L. 1953. "El problema de la realidad en el Quijote." Nueva Revista de Filologla Hispdnica 7:489-98. - - - . 1967. The WOrld of ''Don Quixote. "Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Quine, Willard V. 1966. The mzys of Paradox and Other Essays. New York: Random House. Quinones, Ricardo. 1972. The Renaissance Discovery of Time. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Quint, David. 1983. Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rajan, Balachandra. 1985. The Form of the Unfinished. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rallo, Asuncion. 1987. La prosa diddctica en el siglo XVI. Madrid: Taurus. Riffaterre, Michael. 1990. Fictional Truth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Riley, E. C. 1962. Cervantes's Theory of the Novel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - - - . 1963. ''Aspectos del concepto de admiratio en la teorfa literaria del Siglo de Oro." Studia Philologica: Homenaje a Ddmaso Alomo. Vol. 3, 173-83. Madrid: Gredos. - - - . 1981. "Cervantes: A Question of Genre." Medieval and Renaissance Studies on Spain and Portugal in Honour ofP. E. Russell, 69-85. Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature. - - - . 1986. Don Quixote. London: Allen & Unwin. Riquer, Marrin de. "Cervantes y la caballeresca." 1973. In Suma Cervantina, edited by Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce and Edward C. Riley, 273-92. London: Tamesis. Rivers, Elias. 1960. "On the Prefatory Pages of Don Quixote, Part II." MLN75:214-21. ---.1974. "Cervantes' Art of the Prologue." In Estudios literarios de hispanistas norteamericanos dedicados a Helmut Hatzfold con motivo de su 80 aniversario, edited by J. M. SolaSole, A. Crisafulli, and Bruno Damiani, 167-71. Barcelona: Hispam. Rojas, Fernando de. 1974. La Celestina. Edited by Dorothy Severin. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Russell, P. E. 1969. "Don Quixote as a Funny Book." Modern Language Review 64:312-26. Saintsbury, Richard Mark. 1988. Paradoxes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saldivar, Ramon. 1980. "Don Quixote's Metaphors and the Grammar of Proper Language." MLN95:252-78. Savoye, Jaqueline. 1985. Les Dialogues espagnols du XVIe siecle ou l'expression litteraire d'une nouvelle comcience. Paris: Didier. Searle, John. 1979. "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse." In Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1978. On the Margim ofDiscourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Socrate, Mario. 1974. Prologhi al ''Don Chisciotte." Venezia: Marsilio Editori. Spitzer, Leo. 1947. "Soy quien soy." Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 1:113-27. - - - . 1955. Lingiiistica e historia literaria. Trans. J. P. Riesco. Madrid: Gredos.

Works Cited

245

- - - . 1962. "On the Significance of Don Quijote." MLN77:113-29. Suleiman, Susan, and Inge Crosman. 1980. The Reader in the Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sullivan, Henry. 1996. Grotesque Purgatory: A Study of Cervantes's "Don Quixote," Part II University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Swearingen, Jan c. 1991. Rhetoric and Irony: m-stern Literacy and m-stern Lies. New York: Oxford University Press. Tertullian, Quintus Septimus Florens. 1954. De Carne Christi. In Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. 2 vols, 2.873-917. Turnhoutt: Typographi Brepols. Thomas Aquinas. 1964. Commentary on the "Nichomachean Ethics. " 2 vols. Translated by C. 1. Litzinger, O. P. Chicago: Henry Regnery. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1990. Genres in Discourse. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tompkins, Jane. 1980. Reader-Respome Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Tracy, James. 1996. Erasmus of the Low Countries. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Trueblood, Alan. 1958. "El silencio en el Quijote." Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica 12:160-80. Urbina, Eduardo. 1990. Principios y fines del "Quijote. " Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica. Vilanova, Antonio. 1949. Erasmo y Cervantes. Barcelona: CSIC. - - - . 1965. "La Moria de Erasmo y el pr6logo del Quijote," In Collected Studies in Honor of Americo Castro's Eightieth Year, 423-33. Oxford: Lincombe Lodge Research Library. - - - . 1989. Erasmo y Cervantes. Barcelona: Lumen. Wardropper, Bruce. 1964. "Pleberio's Lament for Melibea and rhe Medieval Elegiac Tradition." MLN79:140-52. - - - . 1965. "Don Quixote. Story or History?" Modern Philology 63: 1-11. - - - . 1986. "Don Quixote. Story or History?" Critical Essays on Cervantes. Boston: G. K. Hall. Weiger, John. 1988. In the Margins of Cervantes. Hanover: University Press of New England. White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Whitrow, G. J. 1988. Time in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Willeford, W. 1969. The Fool and His Scepter. Chicago: Norrhwestern University Press. Williamson, Edwin. 1984. The Half- way House ofFiction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wolgast, Elizabeth Hankins. 1977. Paradoxes of Knowledge. Irhaca: Cornell University Press.

INDEX

Aleman, Mateo, 165 Alter, Robert, 174 analogy, doctrine of, 24-25, 25 n. 16 antinomy, 39--41 Apuleius, 16 Aristotle, 106-7, 107 n. 20 art conflict witb nature, 170 as imitation, 106-7 naturalness of, 103 artifice, knowledge and, 11 0 artists, and tbeir creations, 112-17 audience, Cervantes' treatment of, 137-39 Auerbach, Erich, 18, 19 Augustine, Saint, 18 Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista, 116-17 axiological strain, of paradoxy, 78, 98 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 16, 19 Brethren of Common Life, 28 carnival, medieval, 19-20 Castro, Americo, 4, 28, 81-82 Cave, Terence, 32 Censure of the Court and Praise of the Village (Guevara), 48-55 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de influence of Erasmus on, 28-29, 28 n. 21 on parental love, 210-11 philosophical attitude of, 182 n. 6 rhetoric of paradoxy and, 134 self-parody of, 135-37 sttucturing of settings by, 224-27 use of paradox by; 33, 80-81

use of satire by, 142--43, 146 worldview of, 15-16 Cetina, Gutierre de, 68 character, 95 n. 12 Chesterton, G. K., 45 chivalry; 154-56. See also knightbood Chrestomathy ofAssort Reading (Mexia), 55,

56 Christianity extremes in consciousness of medieval, 21 medieval paradoxy and, 18-20 paradoxy and, 17-18 Cicero, 16 Ciceronian paradoxy, 38 in Spain, 68 Cide Harnete description of Don Diego's mansion by, 183 narrative of, 175-78 veracity of, 184-92 Ciruelo, Pedro, 68 Colie, Rosalie, 11, 38 classifications for paradox, 75-76 defense of the indefensible, 2 contradiction, paradox and, 38-39 Corpus Christi plays, 20 Cortes, Hernan, 68 cosmological strain, of paradoxy, 76-77 Covarrubias Orozco, Juan de, 69 critical reading, 100-103, 159-60 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 19 Cusanus, Nicolaus, 11,23 nn. 14, 15,28,76,

78-79,213 central docttine of, 22-23, 23-24 chief interests of, 24-25

248

Index

Cusanus, Nicolaus (continued) paradoxy and, 24-25 use of paradoxy, 25-26 Dawson, Christopher, 33-34 defense of the indefensible, 2 dialectical reasoning, 17 discourse, 94 n. 9 defined,94 historical, 94 modes of, in Prologue, 93-97, 156-57 poetic, 94-95 The Divine Names (Pseudo-Dionysius), 15 Don Diego de Miranda, 183 character of, 214-24 encounter with Don Quixote, 199 as parodic exemplum, 227-30 physical appearance of, 207-10 virtue of, 204-7 Donne, John, 68 Don Quixote. See also Prologue of 1605 battle of Don Quixote and Basque from Biscay, 174-75 central issues in, 10 3-5 characters' adventures in, 4-5 conflict between Art and Nature in, 170 embedding imitations within imitations, 166-69,171-74 encounter of Don Diego and Don Quixote, 199-203 folly in, 170-71 hierarchy of narrators in, 179-84 as imitation, 105-6 imitation in, 164 as imitation of nature, 105-6 important studies of, 81 n. 2 knighthood and, 211-13 as literary discourse, 3 models in, 157-58 Neoplatonist view of, 14-15 paradoxy in, 232-33 parallels of characters and reader in, 4-6 prologue of. See Prologue of 1605 self-knowledge and, 193-99 as seriocomic book, 5-6 title page of, 88-91, 96 use of mad protagonist in, 165 Eckhart, Meister, 17 Eisenberg, Daniel, 152 n. 33

Erasmus of Rotterdam, 11,27-30,28 n. 20, 102, 117-18,121 sources for satirical writings for, 16 Spanish followers of, 69-70

Folly, 28-32 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 21-22 Frye, Northop, 16 Gaylord, Mary, 96 Grassi, Ernesto, 64 Guevara, Antonio de, 46, 48-55 historical discourse, 94 history, relating of, in Prologue, 143-44 Hudson, Hopewell, 29 Huizinga, Johan, 33 imitation, 26-27, 235 Don Quixoteas, 105-6

embedding imitation within, 166-69, 171-74 knowledge and, 110 linguistic from of, 11 0-11 infinity, problem of, 3 Kaiser, Walter, 29, 34 Kempis, Thomas a, 28 knighthood, 211-13. See also chivalry knowledge, 11 0 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 33 La Celestina (Rojas), 41-46 Lando, Ortensio, 68 laughter, Renaissance, 157 n. 36 Lemos, Luis de, 68 liar's paradox, 39-40, 78 linguistic imitation, 110-11 literary discourse, Don Quixote and, 3 literary paradoxy, 11 logic, terministic, 17 logical strain, of paradoxy, 78-79 Lopez Pinciano, Alonso, 102-3, 107, 158 Lorch, Maristella, 64 Lucian, 16

McInerny, Ralph, 25 Malkiel, Marla Rosa Lida de, 47 Mancing, Howard, 85 Marichal, Juan, 47, 47 n. 12

249

Index Marquez Villanueva, Francisco, 47, 47 n. 11,208 on paradox in Don Quixote, 1-2 medieval carnival, 19-20 Mendoza, Diego Hurtado de, 68 Menippean satire, 16 Mexia, Pero, 46-47,55-68 Mirandola, Pico della, 34 Molho, Mauricio, 89,172 n. 3 Murillo, Luis, 158 mysticism, 14 narrator(s) Cervantes as, 88-93 deficiencies of, 140-42 determining, 84-88 hierarchy of, 179-84 Nature, conflict with Art, 170 negative assertions, 3, 3 n. 4 Neoplatonism, 14-15

Of Learned Ignorance (Cusanus), 11,22-23 ontological strain, of paradoxy; 76-77 paradox in ancient Rome, 16 as antinomy, 39-41 axiological strain of, 78 Christianity and, 17-18 Christ's cross and, 18 Ciceronian method of, 26-27, 38 contradiction and, 38-39 cosmological strain of, 76-77 Cusanus and, 23-25 definition of, 37-40 generative quality of, 3 goals of, 79-80 logical strain of, 78-79 in Middle Ages, 19-20 ontological strain of, 76-77 psychological strain of, 77-78 Renaissance "epidemic" of, 25-26 Renaissance types of, 75-79 Saint Francis and, 21-22 in Spain, 41 in terministic logic, 17 tradition of, 2 as trope of thought, 70-71 in works after Erasmus, 32-33 paradoxical encomia, 2 n. 3, 38 Paradox stoicorum (Cicero), 16

parental love, 210-11 Parmenides (Plato), 11,76 as abstract exercise, 12 as example of paradoxical discourse, 13-14 paradoxy in, 12 ultimate truth in, 12-13 Western mysticism and, 14 Paul, Saint, 18 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 18 Peters, Helen, 70 n. 26 Petrarch, 16 Petronius, 16 Plato, 11-14,76 poetic discourse, 94-96 poetics, 106-11 Poetics (Aristotle), 106-7 Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 11,27-30,29 n. 23,

102,117-18, 121 Prologue of 1605. See also Don Quixote author's self parody in, 134 axiological paradoxy in, 98 central issues of Don Quixote in, 103-4 Cervantes as narrator in, 88-93 Cervantes' paternity of characters in, 112-22 Cervantes' treatment of the audience and,

122-30, 137-39 critical reading and, 159-60 determining narrator of, 84-88 imitation in, 148-51, 156 issue of artists and their creations in, 112-17 as key to Don Quixote, 82, 82 n. 5 list of narrators deficiencies in, 140-42 modes of discourse in, 93-97, 156-57 overview of, 81-84 reading of, 100-103 relating of history in, 143-44 structure of, 84 textual revisions and, 144-47 theoretical issues about poetics and poetic creation in, 106-11 Pseudo-Dionysius, 15, 15 n. 5,76 psychological strain, of paradoxy, 77-78 Quinones, Ricardo, 34 Rabelais, Franc;;ois, 19 Rallo, Asunci6n, 48 n. 13 Reader-Response Theory; 161 n. 38 Renaissance laughter, 157 n. 36 Renaissance paradoxy, types of, 75-79

250 Renaissance writers, 33-35, 61 n. 22 rhetorical paradoxes, 38

Riley, E. c., 169

Index terministic logic, in paradoxy, 17 title page, of Don Quixote, 88-91, 96 Torquemada, Antonio de, 69

Rojas, Fernando de, 41-46 Sanchez, Francisco, 69 Sancho Panza, 177, 178-79, 185,204 satire, Cervantes' use of, 142-43, 146 Schlegel, Friedrich, 170 self-knowledge, in Don Quixote, 193-94 Silenus, 31, 31 n. 27 Smirh, Barbara Herrnstein, 93-94, 94 n. 10,95 n.ll Spain Ciceronian paradoxy in, 68 paradoxy in, 41

Valdes, Alfonso de, 69 Valtanis Mexia, Father Domingo, 68-69 Varro, 16 Vega, Antonio LOpez, 69 Vega, Lope de, 142, 146 Vilanova, Antonio, 117, 117 n. 23 Vives, Juan Luis, 34 Wardropper, Bruce, 94 Weiger, John, 86 Western mysticism, 14 White, Hayden, 171

11111111111111111111111111 9 780271 023649

,!7IA2H1-acdgej!

6.14 x 9.21

.555

6.14 x 9.21

MARGARET